Child of Hope
by bissek
Summary: Sinner Chrono has just met Joshua Christopher's successor as Apostle of Hope: a girl named Hotaru Tomoe. Can he protect her from the forces seeking to take advantage of her powers?
1. Prologue

Disclaimer: Chrono Crusade is the property of Daisuke Moriyama. Sailor Moon is the property of Naoko Takuechi.

Child Of Hope

By Bissek

Prologue

The Silver Millennium was the pinnacle of civilization in the Sol System. It brought life and culture to all nine of the planets, even those whose locations made them not normally hospitable to life. It brought about levels of magical and technological development that have never been equaled. It was destroyed in a single day by a woman who came out on the losing side of a love triangle and happened to be a horrifically poor loser.

It is ironic that the only people involved in the brief and brutal war that destroyed the Silver Millennium that were remembered by the population as a whole after the ashes cooled was a race whose involvement in the war was totally accidental. The colony ship Pandaemonium, bearing the last survivors of the Banmaden race, was traveling towards Earth when the war broke out, in hopes of meeting with the leaders of the region known as Atlas (known by later legends as Atlantis) to gain permission to settle there, their home world having been destroyed. The ship was damaged in the crossfire between the two sides, and crash landed on Atlas, the explosion from the overloading warp drive causing the continent to sink into the sea.

All the leaders of the Banmaden were killed in the crash, and the organic core of the main computer was severely damaged. The survivors were forced to abduct a human female from the local population and convert her into becoming a backup core. Over time, they got into the habit of using the transporter to leave Pandaemonium, using lethal force to steal whatever supplies they needed – including more women to replace the backup core whenever the old one started to die – and then returning home. With the loss of most of the data records in the computer and the death of their leaders, later generations assumed that was how life was supposed to be. Humans came to call the Banmaden demons, and the Banmaden came to call themselves that as well. The humans believed that the demons were the embodiment of evil, and as such, any material, spell or ritual that could harm them was considered holy, and religions were formed to explain why these items could harm the demons. The war between mankind and demonkind was a never-ending series of skirmishes for thousands of years, until a mistake on the part of the demons changed the equation forever.

The demons had recently replaced their backup core with a human woman by the name of Lilith. Eight months after her integration into Pandaemonium, the birthing matrix produced a pair of twin demons, who were named Aion and Chrono, the first demons born to generation 260 after landing. When the elder, Aion, came of age, he was tested and found to be powerful and highly linked to Pandaemonium. So powerful and so highly linked that he, his twin, and all demons born from generation 260 onward were considered to be threats that needed to be eliminated. Aion discovered the plot, and formed his own conspiracy, planning to destroy the current system and remake the world in his own image. Only six people survived out of the army of younger demons that Aion had amassed, including Aion and his twin brother. They became known as the Sinners, while the loyalists were known as the Pursuers, for their quest to hunt down and destroy those who had done the unthinkable and waged war on their brother demons.

A year after the failed rebellion, Aion and Chrono came to a violent parting of ways. They did not meet again for fifty years, the night before Chrono allied himself with the Order of Mary Magdalene, a faction of the Catholic Church that specialized in investigating and dealing with paranormal incidents. The next time they met was the beginning of a series of events that ended the Sinner's Rebellion once and for all.

The battle of Pandaemonium, fought on December 24, 1924, was the end of the Sinner's Rebellion, and also of the Banmaden race. In a three-way battle between the Sinners, the Pursuers, and the Order, Pandaemonium was destroyed, taking with it every single one of the Pursuers. Of the five Sinners, one had been killed before the battle, two died during the battle, and the remaining two were last seen entering Pandaemonium's core. The sixth Sinner, Chrono, was last seen heading into Pandaemonium's core trying to ensure that its destruction would not result in legion, the symbiotic lifeforms that attach themselves in massive quantities to all demons, spreading all over the world, infecting humans and turning them into demons themselves.

None of those three demons were ever seen again. The only evidence that Chrono may have survived was that every year on the anniversary of his human partner's death, a bouquet of flowers appeared on her grave, with no person knowing who put them there. With the demons extinct, the number of paranormal incidents went down considerably. As such, the Order was reduced in size and most of the weapons they developed for fighting monsters were scrapped and forgotten.

But two of the six Sinners survived that battle. They remain, living in a world that would undoubtedly try to kill them if it knew they lived, even though neither one has anything against the human race. Seventy years after the battle, they live still. This is their story.

* * *

Eden, the Sinner's Paradise. 1994

The floating structure slowly came to a stop over the city of Tokyo. The barrier fields would keep any casual observer from noticing a five acre facility floating in midair. This development had become crucial after every approach to every developed country in the world became covered by radar stations during the cold war. Neither Sinner wanted their home strafed by a fighter that thought it was a capitalist/socialist transport bringing hostile troops into their country, so Shader had upgraded the barrier fields so that they would block out visual and radar detection, as well as the basic defensive shield they had served as during the original rebellion.

Chrono thought of his sister with a smile. Her technical genius in developing the Astral Organ is what made Aion's plan possible in the first place. Yet even though she stayed loyal to Aion for fifty years, she still helped Chrono out whenever she could. She was the one who invented the Clock of Life, and gave it to him, enabling his survival for the fifty-four years between Aion's maiming him and his retrieval of his horns, restoring to him his source of life-giving Astral. When Pandaemonium's core was destroyed, she arranged for his contractor Rosette and the seven Apostles to be returned to the ground, allowing them to live out the remainder of their lives rather than be stuck in a battlefield they didn't belong in. And when Chrono finally defeated Aion, it was Shader's skill that allowed him to safely dismantle Pandaemonium so that it wouldn't scatter legion across the world and harm the human race, even though that was the whole point of Aion's plan in the first place. She threw herself into any technical challenge that presented itself wholeheartedly, without ever considering the implications of what she was working on.

That peculiar mixture of absolute genius and total innocence was part of the reason that Chrono had spent the sixty years since the end of Pandaemonium's dismantling with his sister. There was no telling what would happen if you let somebody who could probably build a Death Star if you asked her to and would never once wonder what you wanted to do with the thing loose without supervision. That letter she sent to Dr Fermi at the University of Chicago back in the late thirties about the properties of refined uranium ore ended up sparking the nuclear arms race. The other reason was that she was almost totally incapable of caring for herself in a world outside her lab. When she got to working on a project, she often forgot to eat unless somebody brought her a meal, and when she did remember, the meal usually wasn't healthy. If she tried to market any of her inventions herself, the companies she was trying to sell to would undoubtedly con her out of what she had rightfully earned, and she wouldn't even notice.

So Chrono found himself acting as his sister's caretaker and business agent. Shader developed brilliant technological devices, and Chrono would arrange for them to be licensed to various corporations for a fee, making sure they got a reasonable percentage of the profits. With only two people to feed, and their legion keeping both themselves and their home intact, this enabled them to make a very comfortable living.

In the intervals between business deals, Chrono would seek out and deal with any paranormal incidents in the area that Eden was located in at the moment. Between the remains of his Magdalen exorcist's kit, his restored powers, and various toys that Shader had developed (and would NOT be marketed to the general public – EVER) he could deal with most of them without any difficulty. The only problem was that he could never be seen in his natural form in public. Reduced as it was, if the Magdalene Order ever learned that he didn't die in 1924, the order from the Council of Bishops that all demons be exterminated without exception would be acted upon, and he didn't want to have to kill people who were honestly doing what they believed was right. That order had made it unsafe for Chrono to see any of his friends from those days for decades.

A couple of years ago, he had heard rumors of creatures draining Astral from the local population in London. Wondering if that meant that others from his kind had either survived the war or recently came from some other planet, the two Sinners had headed to London, but found that the monsters had been dealt with by the time they arrived. They continued on to Japan, the second source of these monsters, but a situation regarding a cult of Kali Durga in India delayed their journey to the point that they only recently arrived.

A quick flight down to the surface allowed Chrono to rent an apartment from which to have a long-term transport gate set up. That way dropping the field to enter or leave Eden wouldn't be needed, and people wouldn't see a demon flying around the city. Then he started to look for information on the monsters.

He didn't find any usable information on the monsters. He did find a great deal of information about the people that dealt with them, however. These exorcists, known as the Sailor Senshi, were apparently the local heroes. From looking at a video recording of one of their early battles, Chrono made a sudden realization.

This 'Moon Tiara Action' seemed similar to the razor boomerangs that the Elder had developed back when Chrono was with the Order (discarded because nobody knew how to catch the things when they came back without losing fingers). Could it be that after seventy years somebody had finally figured out how to make them work? The outfits the girls were wearing seemed to include the armor-plated miniskirts that the Elder had come up with at about the same time. Chrono smirked as he remembered how Rosette had pulled her gun on the old pervert and told him that she'd kill anybody who tried to make her wear something that skimpy. Were these Senshi the new generation of the Order? Or were they just a group of people who managed to find some out-of-date exorcist's gear and somehow made them workable? In the second case, he hoped they hadn't found any Spirit rounds. Those demon-possessed bullets caused far too much trouble the first time around. As he was pondering these possibilities, he crossed into a park. There he heard the sound of a group of kids beating on a smaller child.

Demons are raised communally. They are brought up to believe that they are all children of Pandaemonium, and as such, that they are all kin. Because of this belief, harming a fellow member of their kind is tantamount to harming a relative, and is considered an unforgivable crime. Chrono's killing of a hundred Viscounts during the rebellion in 1869 left him forever branded a kinslayer by his people, marked for execution with no hope of redemption or forgiveness. That mark was erased only because there was nobody left to enforce it. As such, Chrono could never understand how humans could inflict harm upon each other so casually, and tried to discourage the practice whenever possible.

The boys had just knocked the small, frail-looking girl to the ground. One of them was drawing back his fist for a punch, when suddenly a hand grabbed the boy by the shoulders and spun him around.

"What do you think you're doing, boy?" The owner of that hand asked. Said owner looked to be about twenty years old. He had highly pointed ears, and purple hair tied in a long braid, going down to his waist, tied at the end with a yellow ribbon. The boys might have teased anyone their own age for wearing his hair like that, but something in the way that his deep red eyes glared at them implied that that would be a very bad idea.

"S-She's a freak. We're just trying to get her to stop acting like one." Stammered the boy, who found this stranger far more intimidating than any of his teachers. Maybe it was the way that his eyes appeared to be slightly glowing.

"And what has she done to be considered a freak?" The stranger demanded.

"She h-holds her hands over people where they've been hurt, and they suddenly heal! I-It's not natural!"

"I see. She has a gift which enables her to help people, knows that using it will cause her to be accosted by hooligans such as you, and does it anyway. All this proves is that she is a far better person than you are. Now get out of my sight!"

With that, the boys took off. Chrono bent down and helped the girl to her feet. His mind rushed with the revelation the boys had given him. The girl had the ability to heal wounds, but judging from the fact that she didn't even try to use that skill on the mild abrasions she got from the fall, could not heal her own. Adding in the obviously weak constitution the girl had, and there was only one person that she could be. The Apostle of Hope, one of the seven humans in any generation capable of manipulating the Astral Line directly. The previous holder of that title was the late Father Joshua Christopher, Rosette's brother. Now it seemed that the dubious honor had passed on to a new person.

"Thank you," The girl said.

"Not a problem. My name is Chrono. What's yours?" He replied.

"Hotaru. Hotaru Tomoe."

* * *

OMAKE: After hearing from Chrono that an Apostle had been found in Tokyo, Shader turned on the Astral scanning device she had built to find the apostles seventy years before. Looking at the readings, she found that a second Astral focus was in Tokyo, in the region known as Nerima. She decided to head down there and take a look.

After seeing another cat-girl running around the area without anybody noticing, she decided that it would be alright for her to shift to her natural form. The only reaction anybody had was that some people inquired if she was related to the other cat-girl, who was apparently named Nuku-Nuku.

Eventually she found the person she was looking for. It was obvious who she was looking for just from overhearing gossip as she walked by. A boy who had superhumanly good fighting skills, that often got him into trouble and rarely resolved it in a permanent manner. A typical example of the Apostolic gift of an incredible ability which never does any good for the person who has it and often brings in trouble whenever it's used for any reason. When she saw him, she decided that he looked so cute that she just had to get in a snuggle. She ran towards the boy and grabbed him in a friendly hug.

"You Apostles are always such cute kids! I just to give you a big hug!" She gushed.

The boy's reaction wasn't what she expected.

"C-C-C-CAAAAAAATTTTTTTTT!" The boy screamed, breaking free of her grip and running down the street with a speed borne of sheer terror.

Shader was confused. She'd never seen anybody act like that before. Then she saw three unhappy looking girls produce a variety of blunt implements and decided that running away would be a good idea for herself.

* * *

A/N: This is based on the Chrono Crusade manga, not the anime. If you haven't read the manga, I recommend that you do so, it's much better than the anime. The only things I will take from the anime will be minor bits that didn't affect that main storyline.

The bit about the razor boomerangs and the armor plated miniskirts was borrowed from the fic "Inventions of the Worst Kind" by Adrienne Channing. I figured that (and the bit about anti-demon attack cats) would be a funny way to give Chrono some confusion.

I realize that I didn't explain a lot of CC terminology and background very well in this prologue, but that's because Chrono will be obliged to explain it in detail to members of the SM cast eventually and I didn't feel like writing it twice.

Hotaru being Joshua's successor as an Apostle is not related to genetics or reincarnation in any way. Reincarnation according to the way souls are explained in the CC universe is a very rare event, and by that explanation Serenity's spell back in the Silver Millennium is the only reason any of the Senshi reincarnated at all.

Chrono's people are really aliens? Yes. It's in the last volume of the manga, as is the explanation of what the fatal mistake the demons made in the 19th century was. I left a hint of what that was here, but will explain it in detail later for those who don't figure it out.

I am considering a Chrono/Senshi pairing, but have yet to decide whether or not to use it. If I do, it will be a secondary plot.

What destroyed the Banmaden homeworld? Having it be Galaxia would make a good grounding for a sequel if the story makes it that far.


	2. The Child of Hope

Disclaimer: Chrono Crusade is the property of Daisuke Moriyama. Sailor Moon is the property of Naoko Takuechi.

Child of Hope

By Bissek

Chapter 1

The Child of Hope

Hotaru had been having a fairly typical day – which for her meant an unpleasant one. Although her father's position as head of Mugen Gakuen meant that nobody would pick on her in school, it didn't mean that anybody would have to make friends with her. In addition, the protection granted by being her father's daughter stopped at the school gates. As such, her days consisted of being shunned by everyone in her class when she was in school, and being mocked and tormented by her classmates once she was out of school.

She had headed to the park, in the hopes that she would run into her only friend, a pink-haired girl known as Chibi-Usa. Unfortunately, Usa wasn't there. Some of the boys from school were, and they decided that with the park virtually empty, they might be able to get away with more than just vicious teasing. Hotaru was knocked to the ground, scraping her cheek as she fell. But before they could do anything else, a miracle happened.

Somebody had seen the boys knock her down. That someone actually cared enough to step in and make the boys leave her alone. In fact, he flat out stated that the only thing wrong with her healing people was that helping people who never once thought to thank her was being far nicer than they deserved. She looked up at her savior.

"Thank you," She said.

"Not a problem. My name is Chrono. What's yours?" The man replied.

"Hotaru. Hotaru Tomoe."

At that point, Chrono reached out and touched her cheek, and something truly incredible happened. She felt an odd tingling sensation over the injury, and when she reached up to touch it, all she felt was smooth skin. Chrono had somehow healed her injury.

"W-what? H-how did you?" She gasped. Chrono had the same power she did? It couldn't be possible. There couldn't possibly be more people out there who had the same abilities she did.

"You aren't the only person to have special gifts, Hotaru. I have many abilities, healing being one of them. My last girlfriend had a brother who also had the power to heal with a touch.

Your power is a gift, Hotaru. It's nothing to be ashamed of. So long as you make sure you can control the gifts you have and don't use them to harm people, those boys and anyone like them have no right to condemn you for having them."

"You mean I-I'm not alone? There are others out there like me?" Her question was filled with a growing sense of hope. If there were others like her, then all the people who picked on her were wrong. She wouldn't be a freak anymore. She could find some of these people who were like her and finally be someplace she belonged.

"That's right, Hotaru. You're not alone"

At that point, Hotaru knew that a miracle had occurred. Here was somebody just like her. Someone who had gifts like she did and knew others who had similar gifts. Someone who treated her like she was normal and was willing to protect her from those who considered her a freak. She clung to her new friend and wept silent tears of joy.

* * *

Chrono looked down at the weeping child. From what she had said and the way the boys acted, it seemed as if the poor girl had been harassed for having special powers for a long time and nobody had really done anything about it before now. He could confirm his suspicions by reading her mind, but invading her privacy to that level was totally unwarranted at this time.

Why was it that those who were gifted with an Apostle's powers were always plagued with misfortune? It couldn't be karma; the powers of an Apostle would not work if they used them on themselves. Considering how Azmaria Hendric – the Apostle of Charity – had been cursed to have everyone she saw as family die untimely before she burnt out her powers at Pandaemonium, it was a wonder that none of the Apostles ended up going mad.

Thinking of Azmaria reminded Chrono about the Marquis Lerajie. He had forced Amzaria to tap into the Astral Lines, and then used a receptor to drain the power she was calling on, restoring the maimed demon to his full power. An Apostle – any Apostle – can tap into the Astral Lines, and the amount of Astral in their systems when they do so is millions of times greater than that of any normal human. If one of the Astral-draining monsters that had been showing up in the area targeted Hotaru, the amount of power they could get would be like draining a nuclear reactor while draining a normal person would be like stealing the batteries from a walkman in comparison.

And that wasn't the only potential danger awaiting this young girl. Aion's scheme with the Apostles during the rebellion burned out the powers of all seven of them, and would have drove Joshua insane if Rosette hadn't managed to remove the horns Aion had grafted onto the boy's head. No, young Hotaru had a remarkable gift, and was a juicy target for every paranormal entity in the area because of it. Those entities would not get their hands on Hotaru. Not if Chrono had anything to say about it.

Chrono leaned down and held the small girl, letting her know without words that there was one person who would look out for her no matter what happened.

It was several hours later when Hotaru left to head home, much happier than she had been when she had entered the park. Chrono promised to let her know when he had a phone connected in his apartment and the place was suitable for visitors. Then he returned to the apartment and took the portal back to Eden.

"Hey Chrono!" Shader greeted him. Then she sniffed his coat a couple of times. "You spent the day with a girl? Have you finally gotten over Rosette? Moping for five or six decades at a time between girlfriends can't be good for you…"

"Sis, the girl you smelled on my coat is twelve years old. She's a little young for me. And do you think that poking fun at my love life is a little strange when you've never been on a date in your entire life?" Chrono replied.

"But looking for boys would cut into all the fun I have playing with my toys! Besides, wasn't Rosette only twelve when you first met her? She'll grow into the role."

Chrono had to smirk at the comment about the toys. Some people would have tried locking Shader up to keep her from away from those who would exploit her. Chrono knew it wasn't necessary to do that. So long as she had toys to play with in the lab, she wasn't going anywhere. She spent so much time in her lab tweaking various widgets that it was rare for her to leave Eden more than once a month.

But that didn't mean he was going to let her tease him about a nonexistent romance. "Shader! Hotaru is NOT my girlfriend. She's an Apostle."

"Oh, so her name's Hotaru is it? Is she – what was that?" The bit about Hotaru being an Apostle finally hit her. "Aren't all the Apostles old or dead by now? And didn't they lose their powers after Pandaemonium? I thought with Pandaemonium destroyed, the third Fatima prophecy was fulfilled, and there wasn't any need for Apostles anymore."

"Shader, Mary Magdalene was an Apostle, and she died nearly fifty years before those prophecies were made. I know more about the prophecies than you do, and all I know of the third prophecy is that it exists. The theory that it concerns the Apostles at all could be just that: a theory. The Apostles losing their powers after Pandaemonium could simply have been that they burned them out by using too much power at one time; it had happened to Azmaria for a short period of time earlier that year. And Hotaru seems to have the same power that Joshua had – and I'd guess that she was born about the time that Joshua died. I think she may be his successor as Apostle of Hope."

"Hmm… That might be possible. When can I meet her? Those Apostle kids are always so cute!"

"As long as you just want to snuggle her, I don't mind. From what I can tell, the poor child doesn't have many friends. But I don't want you making any crazy devices that require direct control of the Astral Line. I want to help her, not use her."

"Aahhh… don't be a meanie, Chrono." With that, Shader headed back to her lab. She always sulked when he told her she couldn't make some device she thought was neat.

Chrono started to collect the things he felt would be needed in Tokyo. He started by moving down enough furniture to make anyone who entered his apartment believe that two people actually lived there. Then he brought sufficient clothing and other sundries to add to the illusion that the apartment really was an apartment instead of just a staging area. All that was needed to complete the illusion was a trip to the store to get groceries, something he needed to do for his real home, anyway.

Then he started on the exorcist's equipment. The old backpack that he had carried for four years while serving with the order had been put into retirement. It was bulky, the cross burned into the back gave away its origins, and police tended to overreact when they saw what was in it, even in countries with weaker gun control laws than Japan. For some reason, most law enforcement officials found the concept of a backpack containing a phone, a .45 automatic, a tommy gun, a double barreled shotgun, a tetragrammaton cannon, ammunition for said guns, a set of barrier crosses and two long, curved knives upsetting. If they'd ever had to fight some of the creatures Chrono had, they'd know that that kind of firepower was needed to take some of them out.

Rather than risk getting in trouble with the authorities, Chrono decided to only take the knives and the tetragrammaton cannon. The knives he could conceal in a special set of sheaths that Shader made that fit under his coat, and the cannon could easily fit inside an inner pocket of the coat. That way he would have enough weapons to take out any enemies he might encounter without shifting to his true form – which might get him targeted if he was right about the Senshi being associated with the Magdalens, or possibly even if they weren't. After packing up his gear and stuffing a set of barrier crosses into his pocket, he left to pick up one new item that Shader had just completed a few months previously.

Shortly before Chrono and Rosette left New York to face Aion, a woman with a grudge against the organized crime syndicates in the city had performed a ritual to summon a semi-corporeal dog spirit and ordered it to feed on the Mafioso of New York. Unable to defend against a beast that could run seventy miles an hour and could only be hurt if shot in the head, three entire mafia families were wiped out before the Order intervened. Unable to catch it with their normal cars, the Order had developed a custom-tuned, nitro boosted motorcycle called the Gabriel Hound to keep pace with the monster, bringing it to an end in the subway tunnels of the city (Destroying both the tunnels and the bike in the process). When Shader eventually heard this story, she decided to make a new version of the bike.

The result of her efforts was called the Tindalos. Whereas the Gabriel Hound was built by custom-tuning a Harley and adding a nitro booster, the Tindalos was constructed from the frame outward to be able to run down anything in an urban environment (The suspension was not intended for off-road conditions). The bike could go over two hundred miles an hour without redlining the engine, corner at speeds most people would consider insane, and had an acceleration and braking curve suitable for a professional race track. For some reason, Chrono had been unable to sell the design to any manufacturers. Every time he met with somebody about it, the minds of the company representatives shifted from wanting to sell the bike to wanting to destroy it the moment he brought up how Shader somehow came up with an engine design that got three hundred miles to the gallon…

Shaking his head at the foolishness of humans in wanting their customers to have products that were lower quality than they could provide, Chrono brought the bike down to Tokyo, parked it outside the apartment, and then returned home. Tomorrow he would look into what sort of dangers might threaten the young Apostle he had just met and how he might prevent them.

* * *

Professor Souichi Tomoe noticed that his daughter seemed much happier than normal when she came home that evening. Perhaps she had found a new friend. That was something she had far too few of.

Despite that, he was not pleased. His efforts to find the Talismans were not bearing much fruit. If his plans were to be successful, he needed to find them, and so far all three had eluded his grasp. Frustrated, he demanded that Kaolinite redouble her efforts to seek out heart crystals and find the Talismans.

Soon… soon he would have them, and then the Silence would come….

* * *

A/N: Yes, Chrono can heal people. He does so after Rosette is injured by Lerajie in volume one before they fly up to the blimp. On all other occasions that healing is needed, however, the job is given to Azmaria, who can heal without draining Rosette's Astral. The fact that a demon can heal will cause some interesting questions to be raised about Hotaru when Chrono's secret gets out.

The Fatima prophecies are real. The first prophecy predicted the end of WWI, and the coming of WWII. The second prophecy predicted the spreading of World Socialism, and that various unspecified wars would happen as a result of it ( Korea, Vietnam and Afghanistan in the 80s, to name a few). The third prophecy was sealed until the year 2000 (One year after Daisuke Moriyama decided to turn it into a plot point for Chrono Crusade), and has been interpreted to be a prediction of the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II in 1981.

What I described as the contents of the backpack Chrono always carries around is what really is in there in the manga. In the anime, it loses the cannon and the knives and acquires a supply of holy water (something that is never used in the manga at all). The tetragrammaton cannon is only seen in the last two volumes of the manga, and is the size of a revolver, so it can be concealed in a coat.

The Gabriel Hound came from a filler episode of the Chrono Crusade anime. I decided to include it because I felt that having an upgraded version of it around would affect Haruka's relationship with Chrono. The name for the new bike was inspired by the Hounds of Tindalos, a type of relentless, virtually unstoppable hellhound that exists in the Cthulhu Mythos works of H.P. Lovecraft.

Chrono's hopelessly wrong (but rather amusing) assumption that the Senshi are nuns in armored miniskirts will continue until sometime after they meet. The Senshi's reaction to the concept should also be amusing.

The concept of naming the Apostles after virtues came from the anime. I included it because it does not affect the story whatsoever and having some way of identifying them beyond "We've found four Apostles, and need to locate Apostles five, six and seven" seemed a useful notion.

The lead-up work in the story is now complete. Starting next chapter, the war between the Senshi, the Sinner, and the Death Busters will begin.


	3. First Contact

Disclaimer: Chrono Crusade is the property of Daisuke Moriyama. Sailor Moon is the property of Naoko Takuechi.

Child of Hope

By Bissek

Chapter 2

First Contact

Chrono awoke from his slumber and headed down to the portal connecting Eden to his apartment in Tokyo. Today he would begin the first steps in achieving his new-found goal of protecting Hotaru from the entities that he had no doubt would be hoping to take advantage of the young Apostle's powers. To do that, he would first have to earn her trust, something he felt he was well on the way to doing. Only then would he be able to get her to understand the mixed bag that fate had given her.

In order to truly keep her safe, he would have to get Hotaru to understand what her powers really were, and how attractive they would make her to the more unsavory paranormal elements that inhabit the world. Then he would have to train her in how to guard herself from an attack by one of them until he or some other person could help her. It might be possible that she could learn to use her powers to protect herself, but Chrono wasn't sure. On the one hand, all the Apostles of the previous generation had burned their powers out before their sixteenth birthday, so nobody had ever tried to use them as offensive or defensive weapons as far as he knew. On the other, whenever any Apostle had tried to use their powers for their own sakes, nothing happened. Mary Magdalene was the only Apostle to even come close to managing to use her powers for selfish reasons, and the only thing she saw of her own future was the knowledge of what events would ultimately cause her death.

No, it would be best to give her a tool she could defend herself with and a means of calling for help, rather than hoping that her powers could protect her. That plan would be more likely to succeed. In any case, it would be a while before Hotaru would be ready to accept the side of the world that would no doubt be seeking her out. Hotaru had been driven to tears of joy from the knowledge that she wasn't alone in the world, she probably wasn't ready to learn that there would never be more than six other humans like her on the entire planet.

In the meantime, he had the whole day to spend before she got out of school and he could meet her at the park. It was time that he took his new bike out for a spin and learn how to get around in this new neighborhood.

* * *

Haruka Tenoh left the racing track and drove her bike onto the highway. Between her schoolwork, her racing, and her new duties as Sailor Uranus, she was running desperately low on hours in the day. If this kept up, she would be forced to cut back on something just to have enough time to sleep, and given that schoolwork was crucial for making herself a future living and being a Senshi was crucial for enabling people to survive the monster attacks in the present, it looked like she would have to spend less time as a racer, possibly even give it up until the monster attacks died down and her schedule opened up again.

At least the time she spent as the Senshi of Uranus was mainly spent with the lovely Michiru Kaioh, Senshi of Neptune. It's easier to accept the sacrifices inherent with being a hero if you get something back from your work, even if nobody other than yourself knows what that something is.

A second biker drove up alongside her. Haruka took a casual glance at her momentary companion, and fell instantly and madly in love.

The way her companion rounded the corners displayed a level of casual grace she could only envy. Her companion's elegant blue sheathing covered an incredibly desirable shape. Her companion's engine could barely be heard over the sound of her own, showing that at a point where she nearly needed to switch gears, it still had power to spare.

The combination of smooth handling, sleek design and implied speed made Haruka come to a rapid conclusion: The man in the red coat driving alongside her was riding the most beautiful bike she had ever seen. She had to repress a sigh when he pulled off the highway and drove away. As the dream bike left her sight, she caught a glimpse of what might be a manufacturer's logo: an image of a pocket watch, made in a style easily a hundred years old, embossed on the blue enamel of the bike's siding. She didn't recognize that as belonging to any major motorcycle manufacturer. She'd have to look the company up and see if she could get one for herself.

* * *

The park was more densely populated today than it had been the day before. Among those who had arrived at the park were Usa, her cousin Usagi and Usagi's boyfriend Mamoru. Hotaru smiled at the sight of her friend and headed over to see her, wishing all the while that she could be able to run the hundred yards separating them without collapsing and gasping for breath.

They had hardly gotten a chance to say hello to each other when a group of Hotaru's classmates who were also at the park apparently decided that 'the freak' was having a nice day and that the situation needed to be corrected.

"Well now, if it isn't the freak. Were you hoping that if you hung around somebody who didn't notice how weird you were you could pretend to be normal?" Asked the leader of the group.

"No, she was hoping that if she hung around somebody who had manners, she could pretend she was someplace civilized." Came a voice from behind them. The bullies spun around and saw Chrono, whose crimson gaze was rather obviously not amused by their antics.

Adults love to hear the sound of children at play – so long as they aren't close enough to hear what they're actually saying. This may have been the first time the children had ever seen an adult take enough of an interest in them to see what they actually did when they 'played' with Hotaru. It was certainly the first time an adult cared enough to intervene. One look at the rather dangerous glare being directed at them convinced the bullies to find entertainment elsewhere.

"Chrono-niisan!" Hotaru shouted, enfolding him in a hug.

"Who's this, Hotaru?" Asked Usa. Hotaru had never mentioned having an older brother before.

" Usa, this is Chrono. He has the same gift that I have! Chrono, this is my friend Usa!" Hotaru introduced them, clearly overjoyed at seeing Chrono again.

Chrono recalled that Hotaru's mother was dead and that her father spent most of his time busy with various projects rather than with his only child. Given the additional enforced loneliness caused by most everyone she knew thinking her a freak due to her special abilities, perhaps it wasn't too surprising that she'd latched onto somebody who understood her powers and was willing to stand up for her to be a surrogate brother. It was a good thing Aion wasn't around anymore, or he could have used that to get complete control of her within a week. As it was, the situation left Chrono well placed to help the girl, and he was going to take advantage of it.

"Hello, Usa. It's nice to meet you" He said. "And Hotaru, you might want to be careful about calling me your brother. My sister Shader might think you're trying to steal me away and get jealous." Then he paused, and remembered Shader's comment about the Apostles of the previous generation. "Then again, she might also decide that her new sister was cute and try to huggle you to death."

Hotaru had to giggle at the mental image of somebody trying to hug her to death for being cute. Her mood brightened even further when she realized that Chrono's friendly teasing effectively welcomed her into his family. She hadn't had a real family since her mother died in that fire. She asked when she could meet his sister.

"In a few days." He replied. "We're still settling into our apartment here." Then he pulled a card out of his coat, wrote something down on the back, and handed it to her. The back of the card held an address and phone number. The front had the image of an antique pocketwatch imprinted on it, and read:

_S. Chrono _

_President, Director of Sales _

_SS Technologies _

* * *

Also in the group gathered at the park that day was a woman known as Kaoli Knight, who was known to the Death Busters and those who opposed them as Kaolinite. She observed the care that the man with the purple hair showed for Hotaru, and decided that he might have a heart pure enough to serve her purposes. She considered whether or not it would be best to delay retrieving his heart crystal until he was more isolated, but decided that she didn't really care if anyone else got hurt by the daimon, including Hotaru. The girl didn't like Kaolinite, and the feeling was mutual. And if Mistress 9 was injured or killed by Hotaru getting caught in a daimon attack, then Kaolinite would just have to be promoted to fill her place. She quietly extracted a daimon egg from a container within her purse and softly ordered it to get the heart crystal of the purple-haired man.

It was at this point that things started to go wrong. Daimons normally infect an object that has some connection to their target. This time, however, the only things that qualified were either living, and as such could not be infected, or on Chrono's person. For some reason, when the daimon tried to infect something in Chrono's possession, an outside force it didn't understand attacked it. The unformed daimon recoiled from the attack and was forced to settle in the one thing nearby that had any connection to Chrono at all: the park bench he was sitting on.

* * *

Chrono had a suspicion that something was going wrong when his legion started acting up, trying to lash out at something he didn't see. He was certain of it when the bench he and the girls were sitting on started to move of its own volition. He leapt to his feet, carrying the two children with him, and moved away from the bench. Then told them to get clear as he spun around to see the bench turn into a humanoid thing of metal and concrete that appeared to be female.

Usagi and Mamoru had been enjoying some time together on what had been a quiet day. Their future child Chibi-Usa had been visiting with her friend Hotaru, and had apparently made a new friend. Now they were stuck in a daimon attack, and the size of the crowd meant that they couldn't transform and deal with it. If there were fewer people at the park, they might have been able to slip away without anyone seeing them. As it was there was too much of a risk that somebody would see them leave the park, and if that same somebody noticed that Sailors Moon and Chibi-Moon showed up along with Tuxedo Kamen shortly afterwards, their secret might be out. All they could do was hit the emergency button on their communicators and hope that one of the other Senshi was in a position to transform and reach the park before anybody got hurt. It was at that point that things diverged from the normal monster attack routine.

In the experience of the Senshi, when a person was attacked by a monster, be it youma, cardian, droid, or daimon, they normally panicked and tried to get away. It wasn't normal for the victim to draw a pair of knives from under their coat and take the offensive.

"I shall claim your pure ARRRGH!" The daimon called, her evil monologue being abruptly cut off by a consecrated knife slicing a long cut across her torso. The daimon attempted to counter by swinging its concrete fists at the person who was supposed to panic, get its heart crystal stolen, and die, but her victim simply jumped out of range of the attack, then stabbed one arm through, leaving it useless.

Chrono knew that someone would make a try for Hotaru's power sooner or later, but he hadn't expected it to be this soon. He also wasn't expecting anyone to make a try this openly. In his experience non-discrete monster attacks usually invite a visit from a dozen or so exorcists with Sacred-loaded fully-automatic weapons. One or more of those girls in the armored miniskirts had to be headed this way already. The monster he was fighting was either an idiot or playing a deeper game than a simple snatch-and-run. As he continued to dodge the attacks of his opponent and counter with vicious slashes, he decided to use his telepathic sense to see which it was.

As he listened into the thoughts of everyone around him, he learned several things. First, there were three exorcists in the park caught in civilian clothes without their gear. They HAD called in backup, however, so while they were foolish enough to travel unarmed, they still had some sense. Second, the monster he was facing was nothing more than a grunt for someone else. Her instructions were simply to seize her target's heart crystal (whatever that was) and bring it to her controller. Curiously, the primary target of this attack was him, not Hotaru. Had somebody figured out who/what he was and decided to eliminate him? If so, that somebody has underestimated him considerably. This was borne up by the third thing he detected, which was that the controller of the monster was very surprised at how thoroughly he was taking the monster apart. But it was the fourth thing he found out that was the most important.

Somewhere in the crowd was somebody who intended to claim Hotaru's power for her own. That somebody planned to use the power gained to bring forth something called the Silence. Remembering what Joshua did to the Seventh Bell Orphanage when he wanted the "noise" to stop, he figured that this Silence wouldn't be a good thing. Unfortunately, he couldn't make out which specific person in the crowd his enemy was. He would have to identify him or her later.

Chrono finished off his opponent with a stab to the throat. The daimon collapsed to the ground, reverting into a rather mangled bench. As the crowd started cheering the destruction of the monster, Chrono decided it would be better to leave before he got mobbed by the curious onlookers – one of them might be one of the enemies he detected, and there was no way he'd be able to speak privately with Hotaru today. Hopefully she'd call him on the number he gave her.

There wouldn't be any need to explain the dangers of the paranormal world to Hotaru now. That would be both blessing and curse. An introduction like the one she had just experienced was more likely to inspire terror than caution, but it did get the point across.

* * *

Kaolinite was shocked. Her daimons had on occasion been defeated by the Senshi, but never before had the target of an attack managed to kill the daimon himself. On top of that, he had done it with a casual ease that showed he was an experienced fighter – far more experienced than the Senshi. Professor Tomoe would want to know of this new opponent.

Sailor Mars was also shocked. She had received the distress call from Usagi, and had just managed to reach a rooftop from which she could see the battle when the person the daimon was attacking killed it. Hopefully Odango-atama would have some explanation for this. Mars left without even bothering to appear to the public, resolving to call a Senshi meeting to figure out what was going on.

"So you say this friend of Hotaru's had the power to kill a daimon?" Professor Tomoe inquired.

"Yes, sir." Kaolinite replied.

"Someone with that kind of strength could bear one of the Talismans. He could also be a very dangerous opponent. Try to learn more about this person."

"Yes, sir." With that, Kaolinite left Tomoe's office.

Kaolinite wondered how she was going to learn more about this new enemy. Asking Hotaru would be a waste of time; the girl hated her and wouldn't help if she could possibly avoid it. Asking around would be difficult, as she didn't have a name to go with the face. Perhaps the children the purple-haired stranger had run off would know something…

Yes, she would start with them. And from there she would start to plan out how to get rid of this person. He had destroyed her daimon so easily that it made her look bad, and the last thing she wanted was to lose status within the Death Busters, not with competition for rank within their number so fierce. Yes, that man would pay….

* * *

A/N: While Chrono can read minds (the noise that was driving Joshua nuts after he got Chrono's horns in volume 2 was the thoughts of everyone around him; Chrono flat out states that he's telepathic in volume 7), I'm choosing to believe that his powers don't allow him to focus in on a specific person within his range, so while he picked up the thoughts of Kaolinite and Mistress 9 during the fight, he wasn't able to make out who in the crowd those thoughts belonged to. It's effectively like trying to identify two people you don't know in a crowd by their voices when everyone in the crowd is talking. Chrono will not use his telepathic powers in a situation where he CAN tell that Mistress 9 is in Hotaru's body until much later.

The 'Adults love to hear the sound of children at play' line was paraphrased from the novel Hogfather by Terry Pratchett, possibly the single funniest Christmas story ever written.

SS (Sinner Shader) Technologies is a very small firm. Its staff consists of Shader (Director of Engineering), Chrono (Director of Sales), and a law firm kept on contract to deal with patent and licensing regulations. The lawyers are mainly contacted through telephone and fax, to ensure that nobody notices that the president of the company hasn't aged in 62 years.

Chrono's ability to not be noticed by the Magdalens after Pandaemonium is partially discretion and partially the fact that the only people in the order who knew what he looked like in his adult human disguise knew that the report of his death was fake to begin with and had no interest in correcting it. Once word of the man who slew a daimon gets out, sooner or later somebody's going to connect the dots, however.

For those reviewers suggesting pairings: I am still considering whether or not to have a Chrono/Senshi pairing. For that matter, I am still considering which of two candidates to use. Here's a hint as to which ones: One is similar to what Rosette WAS, and the other is likely to do something similar to what Rosette once DID.

If you wish to request a pairing, please include a reason why you think the pairing would work. If I like the idea, I might use it. If you want to request Chrono/Rosette, please come up with a plausible way to bring her back from the dead. I don't think the Silver Crystal can resurrect somebody whose body is completely decomposed and whose soul has long since dispersed. Claiming there's a fraction of her soul left in the watch is a nice idea, but won't work, see volume 8 of the manga for details.

While the Chrono/Hotaru relationship is a major part of this story, it will NOT be a romantic relationship at any point.

My thanks to Hotaru Hope Maxwell, shell, Hoshiko Megami and Hiei's Shadow Tenshi for the reviews.


	4. Various Contemplations

Disclaimer: Chrono Crusade is the property of Daisuke Moriyama. Sailor Moon is the property of Naoko Takuechi.

Child of Hope

By Bissek

Chapter 3

Various Contemplations

The following day, the Inner Senshi gathered for one of their regular meetings to discuss the current threat, study, compare notes on whatever cute boys are in the area and just plain gossip. Once Rei had managed to pry Usagi away from her manga collection and get Minako and Makoto focused on something other than some boy who allegedly resembled Makoto's sempai (despite the fact that he had no resemblance to the last boy who looked like 'sempai' whatsoever), she brought up the topic that had been bothering her since the previous afternoon.

"Yesterday," She began, "a daimon attacked a man in the park. Given the crowds, I can understand why Usagi and Chibi-Usa weren't able to transform and deal with it themselves – they'd have risked being exposed. When I arrived at the scene of the attack, I found that the victim had managed to kill the daimon without any outside assistance. What I want to know is: who the heck is this guy?"

"Could he be a new ally?" Ami wondered.

"Is he cute?" Makoto asked.

Rei groaned. If boys somehow enter whatever discussion was at hand, you could always count on Minako or Makoto to wonder if they were dateable, rather than the actual topic being talked about.

It was Chibi-Usa who managed to provide a comment with actual relevance to it. "His name's Chrono. He's a friend of Hotaru's, and she said that he had the same healing ability that she does."

"How did he kill the daimon?" Ami inquired.

"What does he look like?" Minako demanded.

"He's close to six feet tall, about twenty years old. He has long purple hair, done in a braid, and red eyes. He seems to be pretty nice, but I wouldn't want to see him get angry. As for the daimon, he had a pair of knives under his coat that he used to cut it to pieces." Usa replied, trying to field questions being thrown at her by inquiring and/or hormonal Senshi.

"What else do you know about him?" Rei asked.

"Let's see… He's new to the area, only moved in a couple days ago. He has a sister named Shader, who likes to hug things she sees as cute. The two of them apparently run a business called SS Technologies, since he had a business card listing himself as president of that company."

"A corporate exec that spends his spare time befriending lonely girls in a park and killing monsters? Do you have any idea how strange that is, Chibi-Usa?"

"What's stranger is that he has spare time to do those things in. Corporate execs work long hours. And I've never heard of SS Technologies. I'll look into that." Ami said.

While Rei was thinking up a new question, Minako came up with one. "Is he single?"

Chibi-Usa thought about it, and came up with an answer before anybody could get the conversation back on the original topic. "I believe he said something about a girlfriend named Rosette, but that they separated a long time ago."

"Then as the Senshi of Love, it is my duty to restore happiness to the life of our new friend!"

Minako's enthusiastic declaration, all hope of getting the meeting back on track died. Despite Ami and Rei's best efforts, the topic of interest abruptly changed from how to get in touch with this Chrono person and decide if he was an ally to how to get in touch with this Chrono and decide if he was dateable. After that topic was exhausted, the meeting degenerated into generic gossip, followed by the meeting breaking up entirely and the Senshi going home.

* * *

Haruka was frustrated. Extremely frustrated. She had gone through every single reference she could find on motorcycle manufacturers, and couldn't find a single mention of a company that used an antique pocket watch as their logo.

That logo was the only lead she had on the dream bike. Images of that exquisitely beautiful piece of machinery had been floating in front of her eyes for the past day. The imagined sensation of climbing on board and taking it around the track echoed in her dreams all night. Such a wonderful vehicle could not be allowed to get away from her, and she couldn't find a trace of it anywhere! It almost made her want to scream in frustration.

"Still looking for that bike, dear?" Michiru asked.

Haruka had told her partner about the mystery bike after she had gotten back from the racetrack. Since then, Michiru had quietly endured Haruka's obsessive search for any information as to what company made it, punctuated by occasional monologues on how absolutely perfect the bike was. In fact, Michiru was almost jealous of this bike. Haruka had never been this single-mindedly focused on _her_ before. Perhaps she should try to come up with a way to change that…

It took half an hour of coaxing, but Michiru finally convinced Haruka to leave off her quest for the ultimate motorcycle and have dinner with her at her apartment. After they had eaten, Michiru headed over to her sound system, planning on playing some romantic music and getting in some dancing, hopefully having a quiet evening together without such distractions as monsters and racing bikes. This plan was disrupted when she noticed something on one of the speakers.

"Haruka, could you come here for a moment?" She asked.

Haruka came over, and looked at the speaker. Marked on the speaker was the logo of the manufacturer, but also on it was a smaller mark. The mark was in the shape of an antique pocket watch. The same pocket watch that had been on the bike.

Michiru dug around and found the manual for her stereo system. In the back was a list of patents that the company had secured for that system. Included in that list was a mention that five patents were being used on license from a company called SS Technologies.

Haruka smiled. She now knew the name of the company that made the bike. Next she could look up the company and figure out how to get one of those bikes for herself. There was just one strange thing about this lead, however…

It was Michiru who said it out loud. "I've never heard of this company before. It can't be that big. What kind of small business deals in such unrelated fields as motorcycles and home stereo systems?"

"I don't know. It does seem strange. I'll have to look into that company." Haruka replied.

"You can do that later, Haruka. You've finished the first step, now take a break. I'm sure I can find other things we can do this evening." With that, Michiru turned on the music, took Haruka's hand, and started to lead her in a dance.

* * *

If anything, Kaolinite was even more frustrated than Haruka was. While acting in her role as Professor Tomoe's assistant, she had questioned some of the boys at Mugen Gakuen about the man who had been with Hotaru. Pretty much all she had gotten for her efforts was a hastily constructed and obviously fictitious explanation of why the man had ordered them to leave Hotaru alone without going into what they normally say and do to the girl when nobody in authority is around (Of course, Kaolinite knew perfectly well what the other children did around the Professor's daughter after school – and didn't care in the least). The only other detail of note gained from the children's various lies was a more detailed description of the man than she had before. They didn't even bother to stay around long enough to find out what the man's name was.

Competition for status among the Witches 5 was fierce. Even though she was their leader, and had created the others using the power granted to her by Pharaoh 90, her subordinates did not have any great sense of loyalty to their commander. The only thing keeping them in line was the fear of her power, and that of Professor Tomoe. If she continued to fail, then Professor Tomoe might stop supporting her. In that situation, the others might band together and kill her, and Cyprine, as the next strongest of the Witches 5, would take the title of Magus for herself. Her status within the Death Busters, and possibly her life, depended on her gaining some form of success, and soon. Viluy had made a snide and insubordinate remark about how easily her last daimon had been crushed by the very person it had been sent to attack, without any assistance from the Senshi whatsoever. That made her the first shark to start circling. Others were soon to follow.

Kaolinite went over the few facts she knew about this mysterious fighter one more time. About six feet tall. That made him taller than the norm in the Juuban area. Purple hair, worn in a braid going down to his waist, tied with a yellow ribbon at the end. That would at least make him easy to recognize. Men don't normally braid their hair or wear ribbons, and purple wasn't a very common hair color. Red eyes – that appeared to glow. That must have been either childish exaggeration or a trick of the light. Naturally red eyes were extremely rare, and it wasn't humanly possible for somebody's eyes to glow.

All of the facts gained from the children's description stated that he would stand out in a crowd, but the most important thing she learned about this person came from her own observation of the fight. Whoever he was, he had experience fighting monsters. A great deal of experience, going back for years. People normally panic when something close to them turned into a monster (and why did the daimon choose such a weak connection as a bench he chose to sit on as the target for its possession? It didn't make sense). This man reacted to the daimon's formation by getting off of it, getting the girls with him clear, and then attacking, all within the span of a few seconds. Daimons weren't particularly vulnerable to conventional weapons, save for when they were made from an object that was naturally weak against some form of harm, but the fighter had weapons that could hurt it on his person, almost as if he was expecting a monster to show up and wanted to be prepared. Finally, the way he handled himself in the fight wasn't with the kind of skill that comes from just practicing moves. The way he moved stated without question that he had considerable experience in fighting – not sparring at a dojo, but real, no-holds-barred, life or death battles.

There was only one possible conclusion: This person was a veteran monster hunter, who had come to the area looking for a fight. Possibly even looking for the Death Busters specifically. He had to be eliminated as soon as possible. Kaolinite resolved that if she ever got hold of his heart crystal, she would kill the body it came from immediately; just to make sure he stayed down. Allowing a third party the chance to return the heart crystal would be far too great a risk.

* * *

There were two other parties in Azuba Juuban that were interested in the man who killed the daimon apart from the Senshi and the Death Busters.

The first party was the media. There were entire droves of reporters who hoped to get a big break by discovering some crucial fact about their district's local heroes, the Sailor Senshi. They pored over every battle scene they could get close to, trying to glean every possible fact about the Senshi that they could, hoping that one would lead to discovering the true identities or origin of the city's scantily clad champions. Now, suddenly, there was the possibility of a new hero. An unidentified man who could casually take one of the monsters that had been plaguing the city for over two years apart. And judging from the initial reports about the incident, the only thing keeping his identity secret was the fact that nobody they had interviewed had gotten close enough to the man to be able to describe his face in any detail or had taken a picture. It was possible that this hero didn't have some mystery device that prevented people from recognizing him. That made figuring out the identity and past of this new hero possible. Visions of corner offices spun through the heads of numerous reporters as the tried to track down the new hero in town.

The second interested party was the police department. There were two reasons why they wanted to talk to the daimon slayer. The first reason was that possession of blades above a certain size (which the knives he used certainly were) and of concealed weapons in general was illegal in Japan. This law had been in place for over a hundred years, and the main exceptions to this law were members of the police force and the military. While it was likely that a man who used his weapons to defeat monsters attacking the general population would be given special permission to carry a blade, the fact remained that the police wanted to know exactly who it was that had them before they decided whether or not such permission should be granted.

The other reason was that the police force found the existence of the Senshi to be humiliating. It was the job of the police force to protect the population, and yet the most any police officer had managed to do to any of the youmas, cardians, droids or daimons that had attacked the city in recent times was slow them down. Having a group of girls in miniskirts wiping out monsters that the government forces could barely injure at all was an embarrassment they wanted to get over as soon as possible. The man who killed the daimon didn't need any fancy spells to kill it, just weapons he had on his person. It was possible that he knew how the police could get some weapons that the police could use to fight the monsters in some form other than a delaying action until some underdressed schoolchildren could relieve them. Then they could reestablish themselves as a major factor in maintaining public safety before the city government decided they were useless and hit them with a major budget cut.

* * *

While Chrono knew that his dealing with the bench-thing at the park was likely to cause some reaction among the public, he wasn't aware of the magnitude of that reaction. He was too busy thinking about the monster in general.

The monster, which various people in the crowd though of as a daimon, was after something called a heart crystal. For some reason, something about that term seemed familiar to him. But after checking through all his records on the battles he'd fought, he hadn't found any mention of heart crystals. Perhaps it wasn't the term per se, but something about the term that was so familiar…

Suddenly Chrono remembered a strangely emotionless woman dressed as a maid who fought with a pole arm seemingly formed of pure blue crystal, and the black sword that Aion had forged from his own horns. And with that memory, he had a solid notion of what a heart crystal might be. And from that notion, he had a pretty good idea of what the daimon's controllers could do with them. Chrono went to see Shader. She was the one who had designed Aion's sword, so she would know how it would drain energy and what could be done with any similar device. He just hoped he was wrong about this…

* * *

A/N: Not everything that Hotaru and Chibi-Usa talked about with Chrono was mentioned explicitly in the previous chapter.

I'm going with some combination of scrambled memories as a side effect of being controlled by Wiseman and memory blocks placed by Future Pluto to keep time travelers from saying too much about the future as an explanation of why Chibi-Usa doesn't know anything about Chrono from records in Crystal Tokyo. Heck, it's the only way to keep her very existence from becoming a massive plothole in canon, let alone fanfiction.

The law about weapons in Japan is quite real. It was passed in the 1870s because Emperors had been relegated to figureheads and restored to power by the whims of people with personal armies, and the Emperor wanted the only army around to be his, so that it wouldn't happen again. This law is a major plot point in the early volumes of the anime/manga series 'Rurouni Kenshin'.

Would the police resent the Senshi? I think it quite likely. Think of the 'No Man's Land' arc of the Batman comics, where Commissioner Gordon flat out admits that while he appreciates the help Batman provides, he hates the fact that he needs the aid of an urban legend to do his job. I can't see any reason why the Juuban PD would be any different, especially since in their case they are nearly useless against the problem at hand instead of being useful, but not up to handling everything.

My interpretation of the heart crystals will be described next chapter, though I've already dropped a hint.

Last time, I left some hints as to who I was considering as a pairing for Chrono. I'm disappointed that nobody guessed. Here are some more hints, and they are the only extra hints I can give without being totally obvious:

The closest I am going to get to changing the two canon SM pairings is that Haruka appears to be madly in love with Chrono's bike.

The one who has something in common with what Rosette was has the same thing in common with Chrono's first girlfriend.

The thing that the other Senshi is likely to do that Rosette did – I wasn't talking about the contract. I was referring to something that Rosette did much earlier in their relationship.

I received a suggestion about cloning Rosette back to life. It was a nice idea. I seriously considered it. But I came across a problem. A clone can duplicate the body, but not the soul, so all you'd get is a person who happens to look like Rosette. There was a theory in volume 1 of the CC manga stating that given an exact replica of a dead person, an Apostle might be able locate the soul of that person and connect it to the body, but volume 8 pretty much proves that that will not work with only one Apostle, and there's only going to be one active Apostle in this story (The omake about Ranma Saotome being an Apostle doesn't count). Sorry, but so far it looks like Rosette is staying dead.

My thanks to Lycosyncer and Hoshiko Megami for the reviews.


	5. Hellhound vs Daimon

Disclaimer: Chrono Crusade is the property of Daisuke Moriyama. Sailor Moon is the property of Naoko Takuechi.

Child of Hope

By Bissek

Chapter 4

Hellhound vs Daimon

Chrono came back from his talk with Shader highly disturbed. It had taken a considerable amount of time to translate Shader's explanations from High Engineering to a language he could actually understand, but what he had learned was extremely worrying. After finding a calculator and doing a little math based on what his sister had told him, his eyes nearly popped out of his head. No wonder that these people could afford to send fairly weak and stupid monsters to attack people in public. If just one attack was successful, the amount of power that the daimon's controller would have access to would be astronomical.

There was only one possible conclusion he could make from this: He didn't have any margin for error in this case. One failure to protect a victim could result in a calamity far greater in scope than just the loss of a single life. But there was no way he could be everywhere at once. Even with the active assistance of the exorcists known to be in the area, there still wouldn't be enough people. There simply weren't enough trained exorcists in Juuban to be able to provide fast-response capability across an entire city. Even when the Order was at its peak strength back in the twenties, it rarely had a hundred field agents in one branch, and those were expected to cover several states, not a single city. There was no way that he could get enough people to patrol the streets for daimons the way that the police did for burglars…

At that moment Chrono knew he had a possible solution for his problem. The really exotic weaponry and techniques used for hunting demons were normally used by exorcists at the Militia level. The lower ranks mainly used weapons that differed from normal weapons only in the materials that they made out of. This included bullets. If he could find a way for the police to get a supply of Sacreds, then the beat cops would have the firepower needed to drive the daimons back, possibly even take some of them out.

However, in order to act on this plan, he had to have Sacreds to provide. The supply remaining from his old toolkit wouldn't be enough to provide one bullet per cop. In order to produce more, he would need sacred oils, something that he and Shader didn't keep around. Neither of them wanted to have something inherently dangerous to them lying around if they didn't have an immediate need for it. He was going to have to look for a decent source. In the morning, he was going to check out the local shrines.

* * *

Rei Hino had been sweeping the yard of the Hikawa Shrine when she saw the visitor scale the stairs leading to the entrance. He had purple hair, oddly pointed ears, and was wearing a red coat. When he turned his head from side to side, she noticed that his hair was tied in a long braid. At that point she recognized him: The visitor was the person she had seen from a distance two days before at the park; the daimon slayer named Chrono. Inwardly she smirked. Minako and Makoto were searching the town to find this potential ally and see if they could get a date with him. Ami was planning to delve through any records she could get a hold of to see if she could find information about him by researching his company. And the person they were looking for had just literally walked up to her front door. 

Using her spiritual senses, she looked at the man and nearly dropped he jaw in shock. Chrono literally radiated power. Power in quantities much greater than any of Beryl's generals ever had. The power wasn't like anything she'd ever seen before. His aura wasn't like one of the Senshi's, or a spiritualist's, or any Negaverse creature she'd ever seen. For a moment she was tempted to hit him with a ward on the off chance that he was some kind of demon, but she held back. Usa's report on the man implied that he was friendly, so there wasn't any reason to attack him as yet. But she'd keep a ward ready, just in case.

Mindful of her duties as a shrine maiden, and hoping to learn more about the Senshi's potential ally, she set aside the broom and headed over to greet her visitor.

"Welcome to the Hikawa Shrine. Can I help you with something?" She asked.

"Hello. My name is Chrono. I'm new to the area, and am taking the time to look at the local shrines." He replied.

Rei remembered that this Chrono was supposed to be in charge of his own company. Ami had commented on how unusual it was for the head of a company to not work long hours. And here he was, apparently taking himself on a tour of all the shrines in the Juuban area. Yet another odd point about this increasingly strange person.

Acting in her position as miko, she guided the visitor to the main section of the shrine, where the Sacred Flame was kept perpetually burning. As Chrono entered the room, he followed her example of bowing and offering a prayer to the altar, and then he did something rather unusual. He held his hands outward as if he was trying to warm himself from the Sacred Flame, despite the fact that he wasn't nearly close enough to the altar to feel much heat from the altar. After a moment, he lowered his hands.

"May I ask what the point of that was?" She asked in a rather pointed tone. His actions seemed blatantly sacreligous to her. The Sacred Flame was a gift of the kami, not a campfire to warm your backside and cook marshmallows over! If it wasn't for the fact that he might be a powerful ally of the Senshi, she would have tossed him out of the shrine.

"Have you ever wondered if religion was just a collection of formalized tradition or if it was something more?" He asked.

"What?!" She gasped. Now he was accusing her entire religion of being a fraud? She was tempted to wring his neck and toss him out the gates. The formalized Shinto tradition of long staircases leading up to shrines would do some good here…

"In many places, rituals and holidays are traditional because the local religion mandated that it be a tradition, and the religions mandate the tradition because a previous culture they assimilated had similar rituals and holidays and they just happened to carry on. When you get down to it, the true meaning of Christmas is that sooner or later, everybody comes up with some reason to party on or about Midwinter's Day. Sacred relics aren't immune from this phenomenon either. Selling forgeries of holy relics was a common form of fraud in the Middle Ages of Europe, probably because most of the buyers didn't have the slightest notion of how to check if their purchases were real or not.

"But sometimes, a ritual is more than just words and gestures. Sacred writings can be more than paper and ink. Somehow, they can touch upon a primal force that defies understanding, a force that man has defined as 'God' for lack of any better description. I can feel that power emanating from the altar as we speak. It's surprising how few real shrines there are in this city."

Rei gaped. She rarely met anyone who could seriously discuss theology, other than priests or priests-in-training (And Jadeite, disguised as a priest-in-training). And this strange, monster-hunting, corporate exec who looked out for bullied children and seemed to have far more spare time than he ought to had just threatened the entire basis of her religion and then went on to state that her shrine really was in the service of a kami – and that several others in the area weren't.

"You … can sense the kami?" She wondered.

"I can sense that what is on that altar is more than just a chemical reaction. I can't state for a fact that it a kami. And to be honest, I think that conclusively proving that one way or the other would be a bad idea."

"What do you mean by that?"

"You see, miss …?"

"Hino. Rei Hino."

"Hino, if we actually understood god, what would be the point of faith? After all, you know the mailman exists as a fact, but do you believe in him? No. You pretty much ignore him unless you're expecting a package. Its best if some mystery remains in life."

Rei had to giggle at the notion of worshipping the post office. Her discussion of religion with Chrono ended up lasting for the better part of an hour before he left. After he had gone, she knelt before the Sacred Fire and attempted to gain a vision about her visitor. As she gazed into the flames, a series of images appeared.

Chrono, at about age 12 (Rei noted that he was a cute kid, then suppressed that while attempting to maintain her focus) ran behind a blonde nun with a pistol, carrying a large wooden pack on his back. Another image showed Chrono at about the same age, his hands soaked to the elbows in blood, being viciously stabbed from behind by a man with bat wings and pure white hair. A third image showed an adult Chrono weeping over the corpse of a blonde woman, a large hole punched into her chest.

Rei knew that these images were important glimpses into Chrono's life, and what made him as he was now. But all they offered her was more questions. Who was the blonde woman? What caused her to leave the church (As she wasn't in a habit in the third vision)? Whose blood had Chrono's hands been stained with? Who or what was the bat-winged creature that had stabbed Chrono? Was he connected to the death of the blonde woman? All in all, after all the time she had spent with the man, Rei couldn't say she really understood him any better than she did before they had met.

* * *

Katsutoshi Yamada was a motorcycle enthusiast. His dedication to racing was obvious to any who had seen him on the track. It was that dedication that made him the latest target of Kaolinite. 

She had created a daimon named Taiyaan to seize his heart crystal. This daimon looked like a grey-skinned woman with headlights on her chest and a tire sticking out of her stomach. Taiyaan had successfully extracted the man's heart crystal when Sailor Neptune intervened.

Neptune thought that she had taken the daimon down with her initial attack, but all that she had actually done was split it into two daimons, which attacked her as she replaced the heart crystal. Subsequent attempts to deal with the monster by Sailors Moon and Uranus only ended up with the two reinforcements being shackled to each other.

The noise from the fight was starting to draw attention. Some of that attention came from the press, hoping for live footage of whatever disturbance was causing it. Some was from the police, hoping to suppress whatever was causing the noise. And the rest of the attention came from a Banmaden on a bike custom-tuned for high-speed chases.

When Chrono saw the two daimons, he immediately parked the bike and climbed off. Drawing his knives, he charged into the fight.

Sailor Uranus was cursing her fate. She had gotten careless, and was now shackled to the naïve and overly idealistic leader of the Inners. They were about to die, and the fellow racer she had tried to save would soon follow. But before the final blow could land, a blade suddenly emerged from between the breasts of one of the daimons. As one of the Taiyaans collapsed, the man wielding them (and who was wearing a strangely familiar red coat) cut her bonds with a second knife in his other hand.

But as her rescuer was cutting her free, the second Taiyaan had re-extracted the heart crystal from her victim. Deciding not to challenge the Senshi and their unexpected reinforcement, she turned into a wheel and sped off into the night.

Uranus knew that she would have to catch the monster and retrieve the heart crystal. Spotting a bike parked in the shadows a few feet away, she ran towards it, shouting "We have to catch that thing!"

The man called out "The keys are in the ignition. Go!"

The moment she heard about the keys, she was climbing onto the bike. By the time he had finished talking, she had gunned the engine and was off in pursuit.

Uranus was amazed at the incredible acceleration the bike was putting out. Her personal racing bike wasn't anywhere near this powerful. Despite the daimon's lead, she was easily gaining on it. When Taiyaan curved into a side street, knocking down a light pole as it lost traction, Uranus turned after it, braking slightly only when she felt the bike starting to slip, easily making the curve her opponent barely completed. As she pulled out of the turn, she realized that she had done a ninety degree turn at over seventy five miles an hour. As she chased the monster, she marveled at the incredible performance her borrowed vehicle had. As she cast a momentary glance down while passing under a light, she saw the dark blue coloring of the bike, and realized how this could be.

The bike she had commandeered was the dream bike she had seen two days before. And as she sent it racing after the daimon, she knew for a fact that it had to have been the finest bike in the world.

Two more turns and the daimon was trapped in a narrow street with no alleys or turns to hide in. It was time to finish the chase.

"World Shaking!" She cried, blasting the daimon to pieces. As it died, the blast caused the heart crystal it had stolen to fly into the air. Uranus hastily braked the bike, hoping to be able to catch it before it hit the ground and shattered.

The bike was able to stop as smoothly as it accelerated. She was able to bring the bike to a stop just beneath the arc defined by the flying crystal, neatly catching it in one hand.

Uranus then hit the gas and started back to where the victim lay. She would have liked to have taken the time to put the bike through its paces, but a man's life depended on her swift return. Such a pity. Maybe since the owner of the bike was a fellow monster hunter, he might be able to help her get one for herself…

* * *

The moment that Chrono saw the crystal in the daimon's hand, he knew his suspicions were correct. That was why, when the exorcist in the dark miniskirt ran for his bike, he simply told her that he had left the keys in the ignition and that she should go. She was off before his voice had faded. Then he sheathed his blades and knelt before the unconscious victim. 

"Can Uranus catch that daimon?" Asked the girl with the highly unusual hairstyle.

"Is your colleague any good on a bike?" He replied.

"Yes, she's quite a good motorcyclist." Answered the girl with the green hair.

"Then that daimon's as good as dead. The Tindalos was custom designed to be able to run down anything. If she can handle the bike, she'll have no trouble catching up to it." Chrono responded. It was nice to think that this bike would last longer than its technological ancestor, the Gabriel Hound. Rosette had totaled _that_ on its first mission. "I just hope she catches it before it's too late. I had hoped that this perversion of the jewel summoner's art had been lost at Pandaemonium, but it appears that somebody has rediscovered it."

"Jewel summoners?" Inquired the aqua-haired exorcist.

"Jewel summoners are mages with the ability to store energy in the crystalline matrices of gemstones, and use that energy to conjure up constructs to serve their purposes. Eighty years ago, one of them discovered a way to use their power to crystallize Astral."

"What's Astral?" Asked the blonde.

"Astral is the energy that fuels all life. It flows into a person from the Astral Lines when they are born, and returns there when they die. Astral energy is used to power a number of supernatural devices and effects. The creatures called youma that were running around some time ago were stealing Astral from their victims, to the detriment of the unwilling donors." The girls nodded, understanding. "What happened here is much worse. What the youma were doing is like siphoning a pint of gas out of your car and running off. That method of stealing power isn't very efficient. You don't get that much power and the while the car won't run as long, it will still keep running.

"What the renegade jewel summoner discovered was a way to convert all of a person's Astral into a small crystal and expel it from the victim's body. That's like stealing the entire gas tank. All that the car has left to run on is the fumes."

"Uhh… what happens when you run out of gas?" Asked the blonde.

"Astral is the energy that powers a person's life. Draining Astral irrevocably shortens the victim's expected life span. Steal all of it and the body simply ceases to function."

The girl seemed horrified at that concept. "Isn't there some way to refuel?" She seemed anxious to see some way around the fate awaiting the man on the sidewalk.

"You mean like hitting somebody with a lightning bolt like in the Frankenstein movies? I'm sorry, that doesn't work in real life." Though, now that he thought about it, a sizeable part of Remington's ability to continue in the militia well into his seventies stemmed from implants that the Elder made from salvaged Banmaden technology that could pump Astral into a person. Perhaps he should see if Shader could make some sort of life-support device for the drained…

"What happened to the summoner?" Inquired the green-haired girl.

"She was confronted by a more conventional jewel summoner during the Battle of Pandaemonium. Neither was ever seen again. It's generally believed that they killed each other." Satella Harvenheit had been a friend. Sensing her mind disappear like that had been a hard blow.

Any further questions were delayed by the return of the third exorcist, who returned the heart crystal to the victim and then turned and said "You have GOT to tell me where I can get one of those!" Pointing to the Tindalos.

"The Tindalos is a one-of-a-kind prototype. I've tried to license the design to Yamaha and Mitsubishi, but for some reason they didn't want to market a bike that gets three hundred miles to the gallon. Maybe Ducati or one of the other companies I've tried contacting will be more sensible."

Uranus looked highly disappointed about the fact there was only one bike, then did a double take when the gas mileage registered. Speed, acceleration, incredible handling, and unbelievable mileage?! She HAD to find a way to get a Tindalos for herself! Tonight she would be praying to any kami that would listen that one of the other companies would be willing to make one for her. Wait a minute…

Before she could inquire as to why he was selling his gear, Chrono held up his hand. "Looks like a crowd is coming. We'd be better off finishing this conversation another time. Do you have some place we could meet later?"

The three exorcists conferred quietly, then wrote a time and place on a card Chrono provided for them. As Chrono climbed onto his bike, the green-haired Senshi called out "How much power could the daimon have gotten from that crystal?"

Before Chrono pulled away, he replied "E equals M C squared."

None of the group noticed the reporter who had tape recorded the entire conversation.

* * *

Two police cars had responded to the disturbance. As the various heroes dispersed, one car stayed at the scene to check up on the victim, who was finally awake and getting to his feet, and the other followed the man on the motorcycle, who matched the description of the man who had killed the monster in the park. Since Chrono was staying within the speed limit on his return home, catching up to him was actually possible. The policeman pulled him over. 

"Is there a problem, officer?" Chrono asked.

"Would you be the man who fought the monster that appeared in the park two days ago?" The officer asked.

"Yes, I would." Surely they couldn't be worried about him working without a court order. That law hadn't been enforced in decades in the US, and he didn't even know if it even existed in Japan. There certainly wasn't any evidence that the girls in the miniskirts had ever gotten one.

"Might I ask how you acquired a weapon that could harm the creature, and why you had it with you?"

Chrono decided to give the officer a version of the truth. "Officer, my family has been dealing with the supernatural for one hundred twenty five years. We have made a point of acquiring or building tools for dealing with such things. I keep some on me at all times because when an attack happens, there isn't time to go pick up your gear. You are either prepared or you are not."

The officer considered that answer, then decided to continue on to the topic that his superiors had hoped they could broach with the man. "Would you be able to provide the Tokyo Police Department with such tools?"

Chrono had been wondering how he would be able to equip the police with Sacreds. Now they had just openly asked him for weapons that could hurt monsters. "I think I have something that might be able to help. I don't have enough to equip even a single precinct, but I can give you a sample and let you know how to make more on your own. I can bring it to the Juuban precinct tomorrow morning, if you like."

"That would be appreciated, Mr..?"

"Chrono. I'll be seeing you tomorrow then."

With that, Chrono drove off. The policeman got on his radio and reported in that the daimon slayer was willing to help the police regain control of their own streets again.

* * *

Chrono parked his bike outside his apartment, then took the portal up to Eden. Shortly after making it up, the phone started to ring. 

Shader had designed that phone so that it could tap into the telecom network of whatever system was in the area. So long as they paid for the time spent on the line, the phone companies never noticed that they had an account that nobody remembered setting up. Most of the calls made on the line were him calling outward – inbound messages were handled by a fax line connected in a similar way, which Chrono replied to by the phone. At present, the only person to know the current number of that phone was Hotaru. It wasn't as if he had many social acquaintances.

"Hello?" He asked as he picked up the phone.

"Chrono-niisan?" Came Hotaru's voice.

"Hello, Hotaru. How are you?"

"I'm okay. Can I see you again tomorrow?" Her tone suggested she wasn't really okay, and that she really needed to see her 'brother'. Chrono thought about the meetings he had set up for the next day, and came to a decision.

"I'll be busy most of the day. Would it be possible for you to come over for dinner?"

Hotaru went off the line for a moment, then agreed. Chrono told her which bus stop came closest to his apartment and what time to catch the bus, then said goodbye.

Chrono went to bed feeling as if he had accomplished a great deal that day. Unfortunately, he didn't know how the reporter he hadn't noticed would complicate his life in the near future.

* * *

A/N: Despite most of the cast being involved with the Catholic Church, religion has surprisingly little to do with the story of Chrono Crusade. Chrono's views of religion from the outside should be interesting. 

The thought that not all Shinto shrines in Tokyo have any real power came from the fact that the wards that Kagome's grandfather used in 'Inu-Yasha' had no power over the title character of that anime whatsoever. The fact that the exact translation of the term used for Sacreds in the Japanese manga is 'Bullet of the Sacred Fire' (stated in the appendix of volume 1 of the translated manga) makes the shrine most appropriate for the job in question rather obvious.

The first (and so far, favored) of the two candidates I had in mind for pairing Chrono with is, like the prophetess Mary Magdalene and the nun Rosette Christopher, a holy woman. Rei Hino. Congratulations to Tovath (of www. fukufics. com) for guessing correctly and to Shadow Crystal Mage for suggesting the pairing but not getting the connection.

All three of Rei's visions were scenes from the manga, though out of order. She has no way of knowing that the third scene took place fifty four years before the other two.

Taiyaan was a real daimon from the anime. I changed the location of the battle to suit my purposes. I selected her so that I could arrange for Haruka to have a date with the bike of her dreams.

Fun Fact: In volume 3 of the manga, Moriyama himself admits that he doesn't know if Rosette has a driver's license. Having personally seen people fail the test while driving better than she does, I'd say no.

The Harvenheit sisters are BELIEVED to have died at each other's hand at Pandaemonium. Their actual fate wasn't discovered until 1994 – the same year this fic takes place.

Remington's cybernetic implants and the principles behind them will play a part later on.

The Death Busters are not Jewel Summoners. However, Chrono's notion of the nature of heart crystals is correct. A 50g heart crystal would yield .05kg 300 million m/s squared 4.5 quadrillion Joules of energy, which is equivalent to the force in 4.5 billion sticks of dynamite, or 1.25 billion Megawatt hours of electricity.

One hundred twenty five years takes Chrono back to the start of the Sinner's Rebellion (Banmaden are classified as supernatural beings, so they count). For him it's one generation, though any outside listener would assume it was five or six.

I have not yet decided on any characters to be permanent representatives of the media or the police. I had considered borrowing somebody from the anime 'You're Under Arrest', but then I considered that one of the leading ladies of that series is a mechanic who saw nothing wrong with putting a 125cc engine on a skateboard, and I decided that a 'Miyuki Special' Tindalos would be just too scary. I think I'll have them make a cameo later, though.

My thanks to Lycosyncer (please sign your next review so I can reply to it) and Shadow Crystal Mage for the reviews.

Next time, various meetings, and Chrono learns that positive publicity can be just as bad as negative.


	6. Many Meetings

Disclaimer: Chrono Crusade is the property of Daisuke Moriyama. Sailor Moon is the property of Naoko Takuechi. I am also not claiming ownership of Ranma Saotome, Ken Nakajima, Yomiko Readman, and any other characters borrowed from other animes for cameo purposes in this and other chapters.

Child of Hope

Chapter 5

Many Meetings

Katamari Makimachi had been working for the Tokyo Times for two years. In that time, he, like many other reporters, had tried to gather information on the city's young heroines and the enemies they fought. Like the other reporters, he hadn't had much luck. Beyond an identifying term, all that could really be learned about the various monsters was that they were here, they were hostile, and that the Senshi were the only people capable of taking them out. And for some reason, every time somebody got a photograph of a Senshi, their faces would be out of focus to the point that trying to identify them from the image was an exercise in futility. This happened even if every other detail in the photograph was perfectly in focus, including the body of the Senshi in question. Nobody had ever figured out how that was possible, or how this phenomenon managed to defeat every known image refinement technique known to every photograph lab in the city.

The appearance of the as yet unnamed daimon slayer had provided a second focus for the various young reporters hoping for a big scoop. And Kamatari had just gotten several. The daimon slayer had designed and built a motorcycle specifically for running down monsters in high speed chases, and had done a good enough job that one of the newer Senshi had openly endorsed it. The fact that the bike was allegedly capable of unprecedented levels of fuel economy and two major motorcycle manufacturers had refused to build it for that very reason would be of interest to the business columnists.

More valuable was the background information he had learned about the various monsters from listening in to the newcomer's conversation with the Senshi. The unknown fighter apparently had a much greater knowledge of the history and lore of the supernatural than the Senshi did. Katamari had never heard of the Astral Lines before, or of jewel summoners, but the mystery fighter's explanation of what the daimons were up to based on those references was highly disturbing. Even more disturbing in some ways was the fact that the youma of two years previous had literally been stealing pieces of people's lifespan away, without any known way of reclaiming it. This was something the public had to know about. Perhaps there was some doctor out there who might be able to find a proper treatment for this condition once they were aware of it.

The final piece of evidence that he had just found a major scoop came when he finished developing the photographs he had taken. One shot of Sailor Uranus on the Tindalos prototype. That would serve to reinforce the part of the story where she tried to find out where she could get her own. A couple shots of the other two Senshi present at the battle. Nothing remarkable there. Then came the shots with the mystery warrior in them. Katamari's jaw dropped when he looked at those shots and realized that there was no unnatural distortion over his face. He had a set of actual photographs of one of Juuban's defenders.

Typing up his articles took Katamari all night. By the time he was finished, the deadline for the morning paper had been past for well over an hour. In addition to that, he had no idea as to what the newcomer's name was, nor did he know the company that had tried to license the Tindalos to Yamaha and Mitsubishi. He needed those to properly complete his articles, and being able to tie a company to one of the city's guardians would be a good article in and of itself.

Despite not being fully satisfied with the articles as they were written, Katamari knew that he would have to publish soon or risk having the story taken from him by another reporter. The local police station was on the way to work. In the morning, he'd stop there to see if they had any other information about the attack that he could add to what he had, then he'd give the articles and photographs to his editor.

* * *

While Katamari was leaving his home to speak with some police officers that he knew, Chrono was preparing for his own meeting with the police. He had come to the conclusion that the authorities would need to be informed of the full magnitude of the problem before civil authorities would allow them to act on it. Far too many politicians loved to throw their weight around in committees rather than actually resolving issues, and that kind of delay could cause a calamity here. For this reason, he had mentally prepared a briefing on the current situation, as well as lacking the weapon examples that the police had inquired about. 

After having a short word with Shader to see about the possibility of an Astral life support system, he got onto his bike and drove to the local police station. By some strange coincidence, he was heading to the same police station that Katamari was, and arrived shortly after the reporter did.

* * *

Katamari had seemingly encountered another dead end. Beyond some basic information on the victim of the latest attack and the fact that he was expected to make a full recovery, the police apparently didn't know anything about the attacks that he didn't already know. He was about to give up and head for his office when the mystery fighter walked into the station and headed to the front desk. 

"Hello, I believe I am expected. I was asked last night to come here and provide some information on the city's current paranormal difficulties. The name is Chrono." He said.

Katamari was amazed. The person he was looking for had just shown up and was willing to hand over all the information he needed on a plate.

The desk officer called the Captain, who introduced himself to Chrono as Aritomo Fujita. After a short discussion, Chrono offered to provide the police with a briefing on the what he knew of the current situation. Katamari followed them as Aritomo summoned various members of the police force to the briefing room. Though Katamari wasn't able to follow them into the meeting, he did spy and pick up a business card that Chrono had dropped when introducing himself. He smiled. Now he had a real story.

* * *

Chrono walked up to the head of the briefing room to begin his presentation. 

"Good morning, everybody. My name is Chrono, and I am here to brief you on a problem I believe you are all aware of. As I'm sure you've noticed, Tokyo has been granted the distinction of being the center of the first major – or at least first highly visible – outbreak of paranormal incidents since the race commonly known as demon kind was exterminated at the Battle of Pandaemonium." Chrono began.

A snort was heard from the assembled listeners.

"Is there something amusing?" Chrono inquired.

"You're claiming that demons are real? Don't be ridiculous! They're just a myth!" The officer in question objected.

"When is a legend legend? Why is a myth a myth? How old and disused must a fact be for it to be relegated to the category of fairy tale?" Chrono replied. "Yes, the beings known as demons were real. They existed as a nation until the annihilation of their society at Pandaemonium roughly seventy years ago. If so many as half a dozen survived the battle, I'd be very surprised. That being said, they weren't anything like what you see in the movies. Most horror flicks are so inaccurate that those with actual experience in that field find them funny."

"To return to the topic at hand, your current situation concerns these artificially animated constructs known as daimons. I don't know who is creating them, or what his or her ultimate objective is, but I can tell you what their immediate objective is, and can offer some conjecture as to what they might be up to as a result of this. In order to explain this, I will have to go into some background detail regarding a topic that normally only concerns people who deal with the supernatural on a regular basis."

"Astral is a form of energy found in the soul of every living being. It stems from a phenomenon known as the Astral Line, and it dissipates back into the Line when those beings die. Before any of you try to object, this is NOT a postulate of some religion. This is a recorded and documented fact. The existence of the Astral Line is what made Pandaemonium possible. Astral energy was also the source of power and life for the demons of old, as well as several other kinds of paranormal entities."

"The creatures you knew as Youma were essentially draining Astral from unwilling donors and transferring it to their controllers in order to provide them with the power they needed to achieve some plan. By doing so, they were effectively draining away a piece of their victim's souls and with it a portion of their life span."

"Is there some way to treat that kind of injury?" The officer who asked that question was rather pale.

"Not really. There are documented cases of people volunteering to have Astral siphoned from their bodies into another person's, like a blood transfusion, but that isn't really a cure. If a man donates a pint of blood for a transfusion, their body will produce another pint of blood in a few weeks. Once Astral is gone, it's gone. An Astral transfusion simply transfers the problem from the victim to the donor."

"To continue with the background briefing, we now come to the Jewel Summoners. Jewel Summoners have the ability to store energy in the crystalline matrices inherent in gems and then use that energy to create powerful constructs to fight on their behalf. Back in 1914 a Jewel Summoner known as Fiore was recruited by a demon. She was recruited for one reason – to use her arts to crystallize human souls – turning the soul into a small gemstone battery and killing the victim unless the soul is returned within a matter of minutes.

"That, ladies and gentlemen, is what a heart crystal is – the crystallized essence of a human soul, used as a battery that can be used to power a variety of supernatural devices and/or life forms. The power contained in a heart crystal is a near perfect matter/energy conversion. As such, you could probably power the city for a month or more on a single crystal. And while I don't know what they're planning to do with that kind of power, I somehow doubt that the daimons are being controlled by ethics-free environmentalists trying to cut Japan's dependence on foreign fuels." There were a few snickers at that comment across the room.

"Could we possibly track down the equipment being powered by these crystals?" One officer asked.

"Nice idea, but impractical." Chrono reached into a bag he had brought with him. From the bag he pulled a piece of metal that had obviously been a sword at a happier point in its existence. Now it was just a hilt with an oval hand guard over the grip. Above the hand guard were a few splinters of metal where the blade had apparently been shattered by something.

"This is the device that was used by Fiore's controller at Pandaemonium. It's now useless – the mechanism that used the power it gathered was built into the blade, which was destroyed. Please note the rectangular socket on one side of the hand guard." With that, Chrono passed the broken hilt to his audience. There was a small rectangular socket in the hand guard, about the size of a man's pinky from the tip to the outermost knuckle.

"That socket is the only visible evidence of the Astral extraction mechanism that can be detected without taking the hilt apart. Jewel Summoners commonly disguise their equipment as decorations on the back of their gloves, without drawing any second glances. Such a device could easily be built into the battery compartment of any electrical device, and there'd be no way to tell unless you knew exactly what to look for. You'd offend everybody if you tried, the process would take forever, and there'd be no guarantee of success.

"The only viable solution I see at the moment is the rapid interception of any daimons appearing in the city by the local authorities. Upon interception, the police would have to either defeat the daimons by themselves or at the very least hold them off long enough for the civilian targets to be evacuated and one of the city's resident exorcists to deal with the problem.

"In order to make this possible, I have brought with me one of the more easily produced weapons available to an exorcist, along with a more powerful variant which I unfortunately do not have the exact production process for."

"What? So you expect us to hunt monsters with crosses and wooden stakes?" This was the same officer who hadn't believed in the former existence of demons.

"A cross is two beams of wood, nailed together at right angles at a point halfway down the shorter beam, and maybe a third of the way down the longer beam. The only property that a cross has as a cross is that if you tie somebody to one he'll have trouble breathing. The crucifixion of Jesus Christ did not grant crosses in general any special power over the ungodly any more than the hanging of John Brown gave nooses any special power over slavers. The reason that a great many pieces of Western exorcist's equipment is made with a cross motif is because over the centuries, most Western exorcists were in some way associated with Christian churches and they chose to make their tools in the form of a religious symbol. I had something more practical in mind." From the bag he pulled out a .45 automatic. Several officers started at the sight of that until he held it up so as to show that the clip was removed.

"This is a .45 caliber Magdalen Government. The only thing that distinguishes this gun from any other automatic of its caliber is the grapnel line built into the barrel. What is truly important about the gun is the ammunition that was fired from it." Chrono removed a clip from the bag. "These bullets are known are Bullets of the Sacred Fire, or Sacreds for short. Basically, they are lead bullets with a hollow compartment inside of them filled with sacred oils. They are capable of taking out weaker monsters, and in sufficient quantities can take out mid ranged monsters. I wouldn't try that unless you're firing from something that's fully-automatic, however." From the bag he pulled out three silver bullets.

"These silver bullets are known as Bullets of the Good Word, more commonly referred to as Gospels. Part of their power comes from the runes engraved on the outside of the bullet, but the bulk of it comes from the refinement process which the bullets are made from, which I unfortunately don't know. There are recorded cases of monsters that had ignored thirty direct hits from Sacreds in rapid succession going down from one hit from a Gospel. The power comes with significantly increased recoil, however. Do NOT attempt to fire a Gospel one handed unless you want to injure your wrist.

"Similarly, do NOT attempt to face one of these daimons with regular bullets. The best you'll be able to do is annoy them. Also, don't think that a Gospel grants one an easy victory. There have been cases of monsters strong enough to shrug them off and keep fighting. In situations like that, I'd advise getting everyone clear and then getting reinforcements from one of the actual exorcists in the area.

"I can provide the police with a list of temples that I believe can provide sacred oils powerful enough to be effective in Sacred production, and if you think you can find a metallurgist who can reproduce the refinement process, I can leave you with one of the Gospels to use as a template. Any questions?"

"How did you get a hold of all these new weapons?" One of the officers in front asked.

"They're not new. Sacreds have been in use since 1921. Gospels were first used in early 1924. It's just that exorcists are the only people who ever hear about them."

"Why are you bringing out all these weapons and information if it's supposed to be exorcist only?" This came from a man in plain clothes in the back.

"I don't think you fully understand what this city is going up against here. Between me and the Senshi, there are perhaps a dozen trained exorcists in the whole city. What you may not realize is that this number is abnormally high. You won't find that many in any other city in the world nowadays unless that city is headquarters for an entire region. When you add up all the officers on all shifts for this precinct, you outnumber the entire exorcist force put forth by the Catholic Church for the northeastern United States. The Tokyo police department as a whole outnumbers the entire human force that fought at Pandaemonium.

"One heart crystal contains enough energy to reduce this entire city to flaming ruins if released in an explosion. It could also restore a critically injured high-level demon to perfect health in seconds. Letting the enemy get a single one would result in the loss of an innocent life, and could potentially cause a major disaster. There is no way that the people who have been dealing with this threat can be in a position to answer every possible threat if we start getting simultaneous strikes, or even just threats at inconveniently spaced times. There are enough police to make an attempt at this possible. I am asking you if you will stand as the city's first line of defense."

The room was silent as the police considered what they had heard. This wasn't a briefing. This was a call to arms. Then, Captain Aritomo Fujita rose to his feet.

"The duty of the police is to serve and protect," He said. "Whatever these things are up to, they're going to have to come through us first."

* * *

With that, the briefing turned into a council of war. It was decided to increase firearms training and to see about getting pistols issued to a larger portion of the officers. One officer suggested using the sacred oils that went into Sacreds in gas grenades as a secondary weapon, which Chrono ruled as being feasible enough to be worth trying. Chrono admitted that he had the plans for other items that might be useful for the coming fights, but lacked the infrastructure to produce them in any quantity. 

The police had been very interested in the Tindalos. The notion of a bike specifically designed for high speed response and interception was something they found highly useful. The fact that it had incredible mileage was a plus. Chrono ended up spending the early afternoon explaining the capabilities of the bike to a motorcycle cop by the name of Nakajima who then put the bike through a basic training course – and ended up setting a new time record. The one strange thing was how one of the female officers watching the test apparently wanted to take the bike apart and put the engine into her squad car…

All in all, by the time that Chrono left the police for his meeting with the Senshi, he felt that he had had a fairly successful day.

* * *

The Senshi gathered on the roof of the hospital. The roof of the workplace of Ami's mother had been chosen for meeting their potential new ally for three reasons. First, it was easily accessible to a roof-hopping Senshi. Second, it was not as accessible to those who couldn't roof-hop. Finally, unlike Rei's living room, it didn't provide an obvious hint as to the identity of any of the Senshi. The eight Senshi (Pluto hadn't shown up, nor had Kamen) had only been at the meeting point for perhaps five minutes when the roof access opened and Chrono emerged. It only took Mars one glance to realize that Venus and Jupiter had gone from their Senshi mindsets to their 'cute boy spotted' mindsets. This observation was confirmed when Jupiter produced a container of cookies from somewhere and offered some to Chrono when her turn to introduce herself came around. Mars was surprised when this caused a tear to appear in Chrono's eye while he chuckled. She was wondering what about cookies would inspire both sorrow and mirth when he spoke up. 

"I'm sorry, it's just when I met my partner Rosette, practically the first thing she did was say that I looked hungry and offered me some cookies. I never thought I'd ever see somebody who'd introduce herself in that manner again." Taking a bite out of one of the cookies, he then commented "You appear to be a better baker than she was, though."

"Is Rosette going to be joining us?" Moon asked.

This time, there was definite sadness in Chrono's eyes as he responded. "Rosette was diagnosed with a terminal illness the day she became my partner. She never let it slow her down, but her time eventually ran out."

It was obvious that he had cared for Rosette deeply, and was still mourning her. The introductions continued, but the effect Chrono's statement had made on the mood was enough to keep Venus from attempting to flirt when her turn came up. After the introductions were over, Chrono asked a question.

"This has been bothering me since I first learned of you girls. I can see reviving the razor boomerangs and finding a way to catch them that doesn't involve losing fingers," He said with a glance at Moon, who paled at the thought of her tiara cutting through her hand on its return flight, "I can understand restarting the attack cat program, and I'm pleased to see that they're better trained this time around," He said with a glance at Luna and Artemis, who appeared honestly confused about what he was saying, "But why did you people bring back the armor plated miniskirts?"

The Senshi all sweatdropped simultaneously. As one, they all mouthed the phrase 'armor plated miniskirts?' Granted, it was a somewhat dignified explanation for their uniforms, but where had he possibly gotten that notion from? Or any of the other ones, for that matter? Mercury was about to inquire as to what he was talking about, when he continued.

"I could have sworn that Rosette burned the specs for those. I clearly remember having to hold her down to keep her from shooting the Elder for inventing them in the first place. I didn't even try to stop all the other girls in the Order from beating the snot out of him. Funny, though. I don't remember them being quite that short…"

"WHAT IN THE WORLD ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT!?" Uranus demanded.

"Your equipment. It all seems to be modified versions of discarded gear developed by the Order of Mary Magdalene back when Rosette and I were working with them."

Mars paused. She remembered the vision of a young Chrono running behind a young blonde girl. A blonde girl in a habit. Suddenly, the implication of what Chrono was saying came to her and she fell over laughing from the pure absurdity of it.

"A-Are you saying t-that you saw these outfits and came to the conclusion that we were NUNS?" She choked out.

One look at Chrono's face was enough to show that was exactly what he had thought. Venus and Jupiter looked horrified at this concept. All the other Senshi joined Mars in laughing, as did Luna and Artemis. Chrono looked at the cats, and then shrugged.

"Talking cats. Ookay. After being attacked by a bench a few days ago, that just doesn't seem all that strange. Are they going to introduce themselves?"

After the cats had introduced themselves, things settled down to a calmer atmosphere. The depressive atmosphere of the beginning of the meeting had been cancelled out by the ludicrous assumption that Chrono had come up with. Chrono went on to provide a detailed explanation of Astral, heart crystals, and what could potentially be done with them, occasionally interrupted by questions, most of which were from Mercury. Then he went on to explain that he was preparing the police to be able to help deal with the daimons. Uranus didn't like the idea of normal people trying to fight daimons.

"You're sending the police up against these monsters? What were you thinking?" She demanded.

"I was thinking that one heart crystal will give our enemies enough energy to kill everyone in Tokyo. There are only nine of us here. That's nowhere near enough to be ready to respond anywhere at any time. Once equipped with weapons that can harm the daimons, the police will be able to hold them off long enough for civilians to get clear and some of us to take them out. This is a war, and wars don't distinguish between combatants and bystanders."

That reply, combined with a rather intimidating glare, was enough to cow the Outer. Chrono then glanced at his watch, mentioned that he had another appointment he had to get to, and started to leave. As he turned away, one possibility occurred to Mars.

"You said that a heart crystal could revive a crippled demon. Is it possible that a demon survived Pandaemonium and is trying to return to power?" She called. It wasn't as if long-thought dead enemies showing up to cause trouble were an unusual situation for the Senshi. That was pretty much what the entire Dark Kingdom mess boiled down to in the end, after all.

"I don't think you understand how thoroughly the demon race was wiped out in that battle. There couldn't have been more than a half-dozen survivors, and that number is probably exaggerating. There hasn't been a confirmed demon sighting since Pandaemonium anywhere in the world."

"What about unconfirmed sightings?"

"The last of those was back in WWII. Apparently some bat-winged monster was allegedly slaughtering every member of the Schutzstaffel Totenkopfverbaende he could get his claws on. Nobody cared to investigate, as such actions were technically a public service, and the monster in question hasn't been seen since."

After Chrono had left, and the Senshi had departed for their homes, Mars recalled her second vision. Chrono had been stabbed from behind by a bat-winged monster at an age of about 12. Was that the same monster that had been seen in WWII? If so, why did it go from killing war criminals to attacking Chrono? Even if it wasn't, why didn't Chrono mention that this demon was around?

Mars also recalled her third vision, where Chrono held a dying woman she now assumed to be Rosette in his arms. There was something that didn't agree between the vision and Chrono's story. When did having a hole punched in your chest count as a 'terminal illness'?

When she reached home, she abruptly ran out of time for contemplation of the growing mystery that was Chrono. Apparently, the police had contacted her grandfather and ordered five gallons of sacred oil.

* * *

That evening, Hotaru took the bus to Chrono's apartment. After being buzzed into the building, she went to the apartment number that Chrono had left on the card he gave her, and knocked on the door. The door opened, and Hotaru was immediate attacked by a ferocious snuggle. 

"You're such a cute kid! I can see why Chrono said I should meet you!" The dark haired woman gushed. Her grip tightened, and the woman sounded like she was purring.

Before the hug became uncomfortably tight, Chrono's voice called out "Let the poor girl breathe, sis."

The grip loosened, and Hotaru was able to enter the apartment. The apartment was comfortably furnished, but it didn't have much of the little things that made a place a home rather than just a place where one stays. Hotaru knew the difference. Those little things had been slowly vanishing from her own home ever since her mother died. The woman, who was apparently Chrono's sister, took her hand started shaking it.

"Hello, Hotaru! My name is Shader! You can call me Professor for short, if you'd like." Before Hotaru could figure out how 'Professor' was shorter than 'Shader', Shader's hand had moved to her lower arm and squeezed lightly.

"I thought something felt odd when I hugged you earlier. Your arm… feels like metal?"

Shader rolled up Hotaru's sleeve to expose the metal plate covering one of the mechanical implants that her father had used to patch her up after she was nearly killed in the dreadful lab accident several years before. Hotaru was half expecting her new friends to be repulsed by the thought of a person barely kept alive by pieces of embedded machinery as she explained this. She certainly wasn't expecting Shader's actual reaction, as the woman produced some strange tool from a pocket and ran it over the plate.

"Hmm.. the work seems a little slapdash, but you did say they were made in a hurry. Still, after several years I'd think they'd have been replaced with something more carefully designed. I could make you some better ones, if you'd like."

Hotaru's jaw dropped. She was half expecting to be treated like a freak yet again, and instead she was offered an upgrade for her prosthetics? Fortunately, dinner began before anything more confusing events could occur.

Dinner turned out to be a fairly simple meal, but good nonetheless. When Hotaru complimented the food, she was surprised to learn that Shader had nothing to do with the meal's preparation.

"Shader, cook?" Chrono laughed. "Unless I bring her something to eat, she tends to work through meals, pausing once a day or so to eat something out of a can. Occasionally, she'll remember to heat the food first. This habit has continued even after I got her a microwave and started leaving microwave dinners in the lab fridge."

Hotaru had an image of Shader wearing one of her father's lab coats, working on some strange mechanism while eating straight from a can. She giggled. Her father wasn't that focused on his work, usually. At least he came up from his work long enough to order takeout.

After the meal, Chrono addressed Hotaru with a very serious look on his face. "Hotaru, do you remember the monster in the park the last time we met?"

Hotaru nodded.

"I'm afraid I have some very bad news for you. People with gifts such as yours are extremely rare. And unfortunately, those gifts make you a choice target for monsters like that."

Hotaru paled. She had heard of the various monster battles that had happened, even seen one. Until the one she had witnessed, they had just been a series of events she had heard about. Even that one attack had just been a random event. But to have those creatures specifically hunting her out? That sounded like a nightmare in the making.

"W-Why?" She asked.

Chrono went on to tell her about the Astral Line, and how two groups of monsters, the youma that had vanished some time ago and the daimons that were attacking now, both seemed to be gathering Astral for some reason.

"When you heal people, Hotaru, you aren't using your own power. You're tapping into the Astral Line and using its power to heal. People who can access the Astral Line have a direct link to a virtually unlimited supply of Astral. You can call upon all the power they could ever want. The amount of energy they could get out of you before you burned your powers out from overexertion is enormous. The only good thing about this is that they will want you alive, unlike every other person they've attacked."

Hotaru started to shiver in panic. Chrono put his arm around her.

"Don't worry, little firefly" He said. "I'm here for you, and I won't let anything happen to you. Take these." He produced four small metal crosses, with a metal spike on the bottom point and a button on the top. "These are cross barriers. If you stick them into the ground in a square pattern, and hit the buttons as you place them, they will produce an energy field that will hurt any monster that enters it. Pull up the crosses to turn the field off. Stay in the field and you'll be safe."

Hotaru took the barriers, but the terror wouldn't go away. It would be quite some time before she calmed down enough to be willing to leave the apartment.

* * *

While Hotaru was taking the bus back home, Mistress 9 was thinking. The meddling outsider that her host had attached herself to had stopped two crystal gathering efforts, and seemed to be a far more observant and dangerous opponent than the Senshi were. She'd have to refrain from her habit of making Hotaru deliberately alienate herself from the others in her school. If this Chrono found out that Hotaru went through massive personality changes on occasion, he might wonder why. 

On the other hand, he had inadvertently given the leader of the Death Busters a possible path to victory, even if every daimon attack was stopped. The body she planned to claim for her own could access an external supply of Astral. If she could control the body for short periods of time and learn to tap that power while in control, she'd be able to grow in strength and seize total control of the body. And then she could use her appearance as the meek and fragile little girl Chrono had sworn to protect to get close enough to him and then eliminate the possible threat he might become. Yes, she could see possibilities in this plan…

* * *

Chrono walked the terrified girl to the bus stop. Hotaru had been seriously shaken by what she had been taken, but there hadn't been any easy way to tell her about the danger. His reassurances that he would be there to help her if she needed it had calmed her somewhat, and hopefully the cross barriers would be able to keep her safe in an attack long enough for help to arrive. 

On his way back home, he saw that the evening newspapers were arriving. He stopped at a newspaper stand to pick up a copy of the Times, and then returned to Eden. Once he was home, he poured himself a drink, sat down, took a sip, read the headline on the paper – and promptly spat his drink out all over the table.

* * *

A/N: This fic has just cleared 20,000 words. YES! 

Katamari Makimachi and Aritomo Goro are not related to Misao Makimachi and Goro Fujita (Saito Hajime) of Rurouni Kenshin. Ninja reporters just don't mix with the planned plotline.

Yomiko didn't show up here, but 'Read or Die' is the next planned cameo crossover.

The series of questions beginning with "Why is a legend legend?" was taken from the prologue of Dragonflight by Anne McCaffrey, the first book in the Dragonriders of Pern series. If you haven't read these, where have you been the past 38 years?

To anyone who was offended by the comment about the cross: Chrono has been crucified (late volume 5 to mid volume 6 of the manga). Being tied to a cross for a week didn't seem to do any damage to him, so I'd have to say that a cross as a cross has no power over demons. Speaking of which, here's a quick timeline. Chrono fought Viede on Thanksgiving, then was tied to a cross for a week, then spent the rest of his time between then and the morning of Pandaemonium in a holding cell. Pandaemonium was fought on Christmas Eve. That leaves Chrono with exactly no time to get Rosette a Christmas present. Even with a justifiable explanation like that, Rosette would likely have still gotten mad at him the next morning. His leaving Rosette behind to confront Aion may have been a smarter move than he thought…

The 'You're Under Arrest' cameo will be expanded somewhat at a later point.

Chrono deliberately did not tell the police that exorcists in the 20s needed a court order from a federal judge to operate legally. It would only take one idiot politician to try to lock up Chrono and all the Senshi on the strength of that, and I don't want to go there. I'm still considering whether or not the JSDF will be trying to get into the fight soon.

The main reason Chrono didn't tell the police or the Senshi about Hotaru being a primary target was because at the moment his entire proof involves telepathically derived evidence, and the fact that she was at a daimon attack by sheer coincidence. If she gets attacked directly, that may change.

The second possible Sinner/Senshi pairing was with Makoto. Practically the first thing Rosette did after meeting Chrono was give him cookies (which had been baked by somebody other than her, judging by Chrono's reaction to some cookies she had made at a later point). I'm sure Makoto would like to meet a guy that her favorite pick-up line actually works on. Congratulations to Metroidvania (of www . fukufics . com) for guessing it.

Again, at the moment I'm currently in favor of Chrono/Rei, but if a reviewer can come up with a good argument in favor of a different pairing, I might change my mind. However, Chibi-Usa will absolutely NOT let her hair down and reveal that her odango are wrapped around a pair of horns.

Romance is handled differently in Chrono Crusade than in Sailor Moon. In Sailor Moon, Usagi's love life is handled openly throughout the story (and is a sizeable part of the story at some points). On the other hand, even though Chrono and Rosette obviously cared for each other (and would have lost against Aion had this not been the case), the word 'love' never appears in the manga. The two never even kiss (though there are two or three times where they might have if they hadn't been interrupted). Between that and the fact that Chrono has just become a public figure, it will be awhile before any actual courting takes place.

Again, the razor boomerangs, attack cats, and armored miniskirts were borrowed from the CC spamfic "Inventions of the Worst Kind" by Adrienne Channing.

The Schutzstaffel Totenkopfverbaende (Death's Head Band SS) were in charge of the Nazi concentration camps. As someone raised to believe that killing your own kind is an unforgivable crime, Chrono would have found the Holocaust decidedly unamusing.

Should I have Shader upgrade Hotaru's cybernetic parts now, or leave the issue for the hypothetical sequel? If now, please give me some ideas for features. I would prefer not to overpower the girl (As Apostle of Hope and Sailor Saturn, she's got a lot of power already), so please avoid turning her into the 720 Million Yen Senshi or Sailor Gadget (Go-Go Senshi Glaive!). Both of those sound like spamfics, not things to integrate into a more conventional fanfic.

Shader's habit of living on canned food unless something healthier is provided by somebody else is canon. I'm not certain about her eating it cold, but it seems plausible.

Thanks to Shadow Crystal Mage, Hoshiko Megami, and Lycosyncer for the reviews.

I managed to meet my goal of finishing this chapter by Christmas. Thank you for reading, and Happy Holidays!


	7. Consequences of Publicity

Disclaimer: Sailor Moon is the property of Naoko Takuechi. Chrono Crusade is the property of Daisuke Moriyama.

Child of Hope

By Bissek

Chapter 6

Consequences of Publicity

**R&D Firm Executive A Monster Hunter**

by Katamari Makimachi

_Over the past week, two monster attacks were thwarted thanks to the efforts of one S. Chrono, President of the R&D firm SS Technologies…_

Chrono blinked, and then looked over the article again. It hadn't changed. For the first time in seventy years, he was front page new. Granted, the article was a lot more favorable to him than the previous time he had made the front page (The headline that time had read **Winged Monster Destroys San Francisco**), but publicity was never really a priority of his. In fact, outside of business circles, anonymity was far preferable.

The article held a photograph of Chrono speaking with Sailors Moon and Neptune, and a detailed and accurate synopsis the preliminary briefing that he had given. A second article in a different section discussed the Tindalos, along with a picture of Sailor Uranus riding it. The reporter had done a pretty good job of gathering and presenting the facts, but he hadn't stopped to consider the implications of what he had presented.

How were the victims of the energy draining attacks going to react when they learned that they had literally had a portion of their life span stolen from them, never to be reclaimed? How would the public as a whole regard the possibility that one successful attack could potentially result in the destruction of the entire city? This article could spark a public panic.

In addition to the potential for panic, there were other reasons for the article being troubling. Shortly after the brawl with Viede in San Francisco that left a sizable portion of the city in ruins, the bishops who ran the Order of Mary Magdalene had decided that having a demon on their side was politically inconvenient and ordered his execution. Fortunately, the job of killing him had fallen to their most experienced exorcist, Father Ewan Remington, who had known Chrono for years and wasn't stupid enough to kill a powerful ally on the eve of a major battle. Instead, he _claimed_ to have killed him, bringing back Chrono's hair braid as proof of his 'demise'. Between Ewan's highly respected status and the disruptions caused by the Battle of Pandaemonium starting later that same day, nobody stopped to consider that the only thing the evidence really proved was that Chrono had gotten a haircut. But the article provided a lead that could let them know that that was all that had really happened.

The article mentioned the Battle of Pandaemonium. Knowledge of that battle was pretty much limited to those who had a connection with those who were there. And only eight humans present at the battle were not members of the Order. It wouldn't take much effort for the Order to find out that he wasn't related to any of them. And if somebody noticed that one exorcist present at the battle had an assistant named Sinner Chrono who was _supposed_ to have died shortly _before_ the battle, they'd figure out who he was, and possibly reactivate the execution order. Having to dodge assassins while trying to protect a city would complicate things significantly.

Furthermore, being publicly recognized limited his options considerably. Since everyone knew who he was, his as-yet unidentified enemies knew who he was as well. They could then track him to figure out where he was at any time, and therefore where he was not. This reduced his ability to handle situations that might come up. Fortunately, the speed advantage of the Tindalos and the fact that the police were working on fast-response patrols to intercept daimons compensated somewhat, but he still would risk being swarmed by inquiring minds, reporters, and possibly fans every time he stepped out of the apartment.

It was hopelessly cliché, but there was no avoiding it – he was going to have to make up a secret identity if he wanted to be able to travel without drawing undue attention to himself. Chrono sighed and settled down to create an alternative persona for traveling the streets.

* * *

Katamari Makimachi was basking in the satisfaction of a job well done. He had managed to get his first headline-making scoop, and another article which lead the business section. His scoop had gotten him congratulations from most of his coworkers and a fat bonus from his boss. His career was definitely looking up.

Having produced the first article about the city's latest hero, he decided to try to create a follow-up story on the history of the man. The problem was that even though Chrono's name and description were known, any further detail about the man was as elusive as the true identity of the Senshi. His company was nearly as mysterious.

SS Technologies was apparently created in Canada in the spring of 1932, and specialized in creating devices that were years ahead of any other product in that area. Rather than sell their products directly, it licensed them out to larger companies that would mass produce and market them on its behalf. Strangely, the devices manufactured by SS Technologies were rarely in the same field that the company's previous products were.

Also unusual was the apparent conflict between the company's record and what Katamari had seen from his first encounter with Chrono. Chrono had flatly stated that he had had the Tindalos designed to run down monsters. Yet Katamari could only find one instance of SS Technologies creating devices for a non-civilian market, and that was in 1940, when the company had practically given the designs for several airplane parts to the British Government (Inwardly, Katamari wondered if anyone back then was surprised that a company named SS was staunchly anti-Nazi). Did that mean that the company's focus had recently shifted? Or did Chrono simply have his company build weapons for his own use?

Further research into SS Technologies showed that the company had no corporate headquarters. In fact, it didn't seem to have any permanent facilities at all. Contact information consisted of a phone number, and a fax line. The only known employees of the company other than Chrono himself was the law firm that drew up the licensing agreements and filed the patent applications. Calling the number only got him an answering machine.

Research into Chrono himself revealed no records that mentioned what his first name was. It also failed to reveal a customs record showing when and where he had entered the country. In fact, it failed to reveal any records at all. It seemed that the man had spontaneously appeared from nowhere. Katamari's attempts to find any information on jewel summoners and the Battle of Pandaemonium were equally fruitless.

Katamari had a plethora of leads, but none of them seemed to go anywhere. It was frustrating, but Katamari wasn't about to give up until he got his story.

* * *

The next morning, Eden flew away from Tokyo and parked in a thick cloud bank near Kyoto. That afternoon, Chrono flew down to the former capitol of Japan and shifted to the twelve-year old body he had worn while working with Rosette. Nobody in the city even thought of associating the small boy with a man who was last seen in a city three hundred miles away. Chrono took advantage of this to visit a costume shop and a fabric store, purchasing a wig, some sunglasses, a sewing kit, a book on sewing and several bolts of cloth. Once he had acquired the items he needed and returned home, he started to carefully look over his coat, planning how he could make the coat reversible so as to provide a quickly changeable wardrobe.

The planning of his modified outfit took until evening. When he left that task to see about making a meal, he noticed that had received several faxes. After he put dinner into the oven, he looked them over.

Apparently, the article about the Tindalos had attracted a great deal of attention. The revelation of an engine that took fuel economy to a totally new level was drawing considerable public interest. The fact that Yamaha and Mitsubishi had refused to manufacture this engine had apparently caused their stock prices to drop like a brick over the course of the day. Either out of genuine interest or a desire to keep the same thing from happening to their stock, every other motorcycle company in existence was inquiring about the Tindalos. The only catch was that they wanted Chrono to prove that the engine was as good as he had claimed.

From his first two attempts to license the Tindalos, Chrono realized that a sizable portion of his market didn't want the bike to be mass produced. Because of that, he knew that if he had the bike tested by a driver employed by a potential client on a closed track owned by one of his potential clients, they could either have the driver not truly test the bike's limits to create an artificial performance report or simply suppress the results and claim that his statements were lies. He wasn't a good enough driver to put the bike through an all-out performance test, so he couldn't do that himself. He needed to find a driver who would willingly take the bike to its limits, and have them do it in front of an audience that wouldn't be inclined to keep the test a secret.

An idea came to Chrono. Since he and the Tindalos had notoriety that wasn't likely to fade for some time anyway, why not put it to some use? He'd have to put in a few calls to set this up, but he should be able to give the public a demonstration to remember…

* * *

The article had impact in areas other than the motor vehicle industry. Members of the Diet also noticed realized the implications of the abbreviated briefing of the present threat provided by the report. Noticing a mention that Captain Fujita of the Tokyo Police had consulted with the new hero, so he was called in to report on his meeting with Chrono. Captain Fujita had copies made of a recording of Chrono's meeting with the Juuban PD. One of these copies was played for a meeting of the Defense Committee of the Diet and key officials of the JSDF.

It was reluctantly concluded by the gathered parties that attempting to use the armed forces to deal with the threat at this time was not feasible. Having soldiers patrolling the streets of Tokyo could easily provoke a state of panic in the population. Without a known target to strike at, ground troops would simply be foot patrolmen untrained for the job they were doing. The army would stand down – for now – and prepare for the moment when they could deal with the threat decisively. Until that date, the police would be charged with finding a way to identify and track down the ringleaders of the current threat.

Other decisions were made as well. Japan's intelligence services would be charged with tracing down the history and motivations of its sudden benefactor. Top metallurgists would be employed to reproduce the lost refinement process that created the Gospels from the sample bullet Chrono had provided. Funds to manufacture a sizable supply of Sacreds and Gospels would be allocated, for the police forces in Juuban and the immediately surrounding districts and the military forces waiting for the opportunity to attack. Additional funds to provide the Juuban PD with sufficient firearms to equip their officers were also provided.

One consequence of this meeting was that the Hikawa Shrine was requested to provide even more sacred oil than the original order that had been sent the day before. It would be nearly a week before Rei would have time to do anything other than prepare oils or go to classes, and she had the sinking suspicion that she'd be having more days like this in the coming future…

* * *

The day Haruka had been waiting for had arrived.

A week before, she had seen an article in the paper stating that SS Technologies was going to put their latest product, the Tindalos motorcycle, through a series of performance tests at the local race track. These tests were to be open to the public. Upon seeing that, Haruka had immediately started making plans to attend the demonstration. But an even bigger surprise had occurred that afternoon, when she received a call from the manager of the track.

Apparently, the president of SS Technologies had asked the manager to contact every motorcycle racer or former motorcycle racer he could, and present them with an offer. The offer was a chance to enter a raffle – with the prize being the opportunity to be the test driver for the Tindalos.

The thought of being able to see the full potential of that wonderful piece of machinery was a very tempting enticement. Getting a chance to ride it a second time and be the one to discover that full potential first hand was something had absolutely no intention of missing. She had agreed to enter the contest and filled out the application and waiver forms the next day. And now the day of the test had finally come. Immediately after finishing breakfast, Haruka threw on her racing suit and dashed to her motorcycle. She was going at the track several hours early, and she couldn't care less. Even if she wasn't selected to drive the bike, she absolutely had to get a good seat to watch. It was a shame that Michiru wasn't able to join her, but even lovers need to spend some time apart from each other.

When Haruka arrived at the tracks, she saw that other people had the same idea as her. Most of these people seemed to be engineers sent by various motorcycle companies to look over the data, but some of them appeared to other racers. Haruka made her way to the front row of the stands and found herself a seat, patiently waiting the three hours until the appearance of her dream bike. Finally the hour of the test arrived.

"Ladies and gentlemen," Announced the track manager. "I would like to thank you all for coming to see today's special event: The official performance testing of the first motorccle to ever be constructed for the purpose of hunting monsters: the Tindalos interceptor motorcycle!"

With that, the bike appeared, coming out of one of the pits, looping the track once before coming to a stop in the winner's circle. The driver took off his helmet to reveal the distinctive purple braid of the bike's owner, who headed over to the podium where the manager was seated.

"And now, I'll turn the mike over to the bike's creator, Mr S. Chrono, President of SS Technologies." Chrono took the mike.

"Thank you all for coming. Before we start, I'd like to correct a few mistakes that our host unintentionally made during his introduction.

"First, I am not the creator of the Tindalos. I sell my company's products, I don't involve myself with the design of my company's products outside the initial concept phase, I'm not an engineer.

"Secondly, the Tindalos is NOT the first motorcycle constructed for the purpose of monster hunting. That honor goes to a nitro-boosted 1924 Harley-Davidson known as the Gabriel Hound." That comment caused some murmuring in the group of attendees who were obviously reporters, and Haruka could have sworn that the group of engineers with the Harley-Davidson logo on their coats suddenly became more alert at that statement.

"The Gabriel Hound was critical to the success of the only mission it was ever put on, but was unfortunately destroyed in a collision at the end of that mission. Given the accident record of the exorcist who was behind the wheel, one is forced to wonder how, or for that matter if, she managed to get a license. I would like to thank Sailor Uranus for not letting this bike follow in the footsteps of its predecessor." That comment caused a few chuckles across the audience.

"The Tindalos is the second motorcycle constructed for its purpose, and the first to be designed from the frame outward with that intent in mind. It was named after the Hounds of Tindalos, a thankfully mythical breed of hellhounds allegedly capable of tracking their prey anywhere in time and space. Its design includes a state-of-the-art engine design that achieves new levels of acceleration, speed, and fuel economy. The brakes are also enhanced to be able to safely compensate for the acceleration curve. The frame itself contains a gyroscopic balancing system that allows the bike to restabilize rapidly after the sharpest of turns. This increases the effective turning speed to the adhesion limits of the tires. The suspension system isn't anything to write home about, but this bike was designed for streets and highways, not hills and backroads.

"One final item before we begin the testing. I have come to the conclusion that I am not the best person to be driving the Tindalos during this test. I can state with little fear of contradiction that most of the people in the audience have much more experience with motorcycles than I do. So I have decided that one of you will have the honor of being the test driver. When I arranged for this test, I also arranged for messages to be sent out to a number of current and former motorcycle racers, offering each the opportunity to be the test driver for the Tindalos. I will now be selecting a random name from the list of those who were willing to participate in this drawing."

The manager held open a bag. Chrono pulled a slip of paper out of the bag while facing away from it, ensuring that he had no control over which slip he drew. He opened the slip of paper, read the name, and then announced "Haruka Tenoh, will you please come down to the tracks."

Haruka raised her eyes to the heavens, thanking kami-sama for the wondrous gift she had just received. Then she got out of her seat and ran to the tracks as fast as she could.

She was asked to put the bike through three tests. The first test was a test of acceleration and speed. It was a simple enough test – just take the bike to a straight track and accelerate the bike as far as it could go. The test lasted barely two minutes, and as Haruka basked in the adrenaline rush, she gasped at the numbers as they were announced. 0-60mph: 2.3 seconds. Top speed achieved: 247 mph. 183 Braking horsepower.

The second test was to navigate a course defined by safety cones that followed a series of convoluted turns. This test was to prove the bike's handling capabilities. Haruka threaded her way through the cones as if she was threading a needle, slipping through the lanes without ever touching the edge of the track. At the end of the test, it was announced that she had negotiated the course at 82 mph, something that wouldn't have been possible with another bike given the sharpness of some of the turns.

The final test was the one that could make or break the Tindalos' future. A team of mechanics pumped all of the gas out of the tank. One gallon of gasoline was carefully measured and poured into the tank. The reading on the odometer was noted, and then the bike was taken to the main track. Haruka was then asked to take the bike around the track at 60 mph until she ran out of gas.

As the bike coasted around the track over and over again, Haruka contemplated the wonders of the Tindalos. A bike like this was perfect for racing. That it was also designed to help with her other work made it even better. Now, if only she could find a way to get one of these, and somehow keep people from noticing that Haruka Tenoh and Sailor Uranus owned identical motorcycles…

Haruka suddenly realized that she had been circling the track for over an hour. At the fixed speed she was driving at, that meant she had gone more than sixty miles on one gallon of fuel. It seemed that Chrono's statement of unprecedented fuel economy may have been true. It took over five hours before the Tindalos ran out of gas. The odometer reading on the bike stated that it had gone 312.7 miles before stopping. Haruka smirked at the sight of all the observing engineers dropping their jaws in shock as they heard the final results.

After shaking hands with Chrono and getting a photograph of her with the bike taken, Haruka left the track proper to be greeted by a mass of congratulations and backslaps from the other regulars on the track. Her colleagues clustered around her pestering her for every detail about her experience with the Tindalos she could recall. It took nearly an hour before she could get free and head home.

All in all, Haruka had had a very good day.

* * *

While Haruka was being greeted by her fellow racers, Chrono was being mobbed by reporters. The media had been rather annoyed that their attempts to call only ended up with them contacting his answering machine. The fact that Chrono had never once returned one of those calls further annoyed him. Now that they had him fixed in one place, they were determined to get an interview out of him. Whatever they expected to get out of him, they certainly didn't expect the response that he gave them.

"Everything I am willing to state about commercial business is in the handouts that were given to you earlier. I am not interesting in discussing my other occupation with the press at this time. However, I will state that the continuous observation that seems to be the standard behavior of the media to any major public figure would only make it very hard for me to do my job. Kindly do a favor to your society as a whole and let me work in peace."

With that, Chrono got onto his refueled bike and left the tracks. The press was so shocked by the statement that nobody thought to follow him out. Chrono drove to Tokyo University, purchased a large number of medical texts from the student bookstore, and then returned home. Once there, Shader took the texts and began the process of planning the design of her next set of projects.

* * *

Kaolinite had been having a bad week.

After having two daimons get destroyed by the interference of an opponent she couldn't even figure out the name of, the information she was looking for appeared on the front page of the newspaper. The article in question also explained a critical point of the Death Buster's plans. Granted, it didn't mention the Talismans, or what they were planning to do with the energy from the heart crystals, but the fact that someone knew that much about their goals and had leaked it to the public was worrying. The Witches 5 were starting to feel that if the newspaper was better informed than their leader, then they needed to replace the leader. Her control over her subordinates was slipping.

In addition, the amusement she got from discretely watching young Hotaru get tormented had ended rather suddenly. Some of the boys who were involved in the most recent incident had recognized Chrono's picture in the paper. The fact that a superhero had for some reason taken a personal interest in the wellbeing of the girl had quickly and quietly spread through their class. The rumor hadn't spread beyond their age group – yet – but everyone had quietly agreed that they didn't want to annoy Hotaru's new protector. But the most frustrating thing had just happened this afternoon.

Two weeks previously, Mugen Gakuen had been forced to take on a substitute history teacher. The substitute, a Ms. Yomiko Readman, had the most spectacular case of bibliophilia that Kaolinite (or anyone else in the school, for that matter) had ever seen. The woman literally had her nose stuck in a book any time she wasn't teaching. She was also categorically incapable of understanding that other people might not like books as much as she did, and assigned ludicrously large reading assignments to all her students.

The absolute and obsessive love for the written word that Yomiko possessed indicated a very high chance that she would have a heart crystal pure enough to hold a Talisman. Kaolinite and the Professor had discussed it, and agreed that the only reason not to grab her heart crystal the day she showed up was because they didn't have a second substitute lined up. Of course, that simply provided the woman protection from attack until she finished her last day – which was today.

It was a simple plan. Just place the daimon egg into one of the textbooks that Yomiko had been teaching from, set it loose to grab the heart crystal, and withdraw. The target was walking down the street, oblivious to virtually everything other than her book, so it should be an easy job. That wasn't what happened, however.

The daimon charged down the street towards its target, causing most of the people on the street to flee in terror. Yomiko didn't look up from the book. When the daimon attempted to steal her heart crystal, she held up one arm. Paper flew out of her sleeve, forming a wall between her and the daimon. While the daimon tried to batter through the barrier, which moved constantly to stay between it and its intended victim, Yomiko simply crounched behind the wall of paper and continued reading.

After a short time in which the daimon tried to reach its target and the target continued reading, a foot patrolman arrived at the scene of the disturbance. Upon seeing the daimon, the officer pulled out his gun and started firing. That sight caused Kaolinite, who had been watching from a distance, to be very confused. Since when did the officers on street patrol start carrying guns? And when did the kanji for 'Akuryou Taisan' appear at the impact point of a bullet?

The daimon screamed in pain, recoiling from the impact of the bullet. Fortunately, the officer in question wasn't a very good shot, and the bullet didn't hit any vital area. The daimon turned and attacked the policeman. The policeman continued to fire, each shot hitting the daimon but not at any point that would critically injure a daimon or a human. Despite that, every bullet caused the daimon to get noticeably weaker as it staggered towards its enemy. The daimon gained a respite from the pounding when the gun clicked empty. The daimon tried to take down the patrolman before he could reload, but before that could happen, one of the Senshi had arrived. Between the fact that the daimon had already been weakened and the fact that it was made out of paper, one attack from Sailor Mars was enough to reduce it to ash.

By the time that Kaolinite finished gaping at the scene that had just happened to look for Yomiko, her intended victim was halfway down the street, still reading. Apparently, the moment the daimon turned to attack the cop instead of her, she had dispelled whatever barrier she had conjured up and continued on her way. Not only had the attack not gotten the woman's heart crystal, it had barely even gotten her attention.

As disturbing as the thought of somebody going through a daimon attack without consciously noticing it was happening, the battle was far more important. The police had acquired weapons that could harm daimons. Furthermore, they were issuing them to beat cops, meaning that a daimon could run into a prepared opponent just about anywhere. If the officer who engaged the enemy been able to shoot straight, it was possible that he could have beaten the daimon without Senshi assistance. Things were looking bad for the Death Busters.

Kaolinite knew that this development would be blamed on her by the others. She had to come up with a high-profile success, and soon, or her life would be in grave danger…

* * *

**Meanwhile, in Chicago...**

Azmaria Hendric Christopher looked at the picture in the newspaper again, and then looked at a very old photograph that she had kept for decades. Comparing the face of the apparently twelve year old boy in the photograph against the face of the twenty-something year old man in the newspaper. The first image looked like a much younger version of the second. She looked at the picture of the motorcycle, or more accurately, the pocketwatch symbol embossed on the motorcycle. It looked exactly like the old watch on her dresser did before it was broken at Pandaemonium. There was no doubt about it. It was him.

After seventy years, Chrono had reappeared. Where had he been all this time? How in the world did he end up running an R&D corporation? And, most importantly, _why had he not written, called or visited her (or Rosette, while she was alive) **once **__in SEVENTY YEARS?_

Azmaria decided that she needed to see Chrono and get some answers to these questions. In fact, she thought that there was one other person from those days who might be willing to join her in getting those answers. Azmaria looked up the number and called up one of Rosette's old friends, Dr. Elizabeth Grunberg, MD (retired).

"Hello, Beth? It's Azmaria. Did you see the big story from Japan in the paper today? Didn't the guy in that photo look awfully familiar to you?"

* * *

A/N: Elizabeth "Beth" Grunberg is an extremely minor character from the manga. She appears in the last chapter of volume 7 and the last chapter of volume 8, and that's it.

While it's plausible that Beth has a new last name by now, I'm going to continue using the last names provided in canon. The end of the manga strongly implied that Azmaria married Joshua.

Chrono's fight in San Francisco did get him in the papers. While the actual headline wasn't shown, a picture of Chrono in demon form was taken. That could cause trouble later on.

The main reason Pandaemonium wasn't well known is because the part of the battle that humans were involved in only lasted a few hours. Nobody outside the Order really had a chance to notice what was happening. The Black Dog incident, which brought about the creation of the Gabriel Hound, lasted for days. There was plenty of time for the story of that incident to spread to the occult community of New York and then to other parties. Rosette's history of motor vehicle safety (or rather, total lack thereof) was also well known. Discussing the Gabriel Hound and its ultimate fate doesn't provide any hints about Chrono's true identity that weren't already there.

The performance numbers for the Tindalos were made up off the top of my head. I have no clue how they'd line up against a real racing bike. If someone can provide numbers proving that they're too low to be state-of-the-art back in the nineties or are simply unsafe, let me know and I'll see about correcting them. My sole concession to making the bike street legal was to not turn it into something from Q branch.

Why is SS Technologies a Canadian company? Because that's where I decided Chrono was when he filed the paperwork. I don't know anything about corporate law in any country, so I'm not even going to try integrating it into the story.

Policemen in Japan don't carry guns unless their specific duties require it. The current situation makes it so that everybody in the police now has duties requiring the possession of firearms.

'Akuryou Taisan' translates roughly to 'Evil Begone'. It's the inscription written on Shinto exorcism wards. Since Christian-made Sacreds cause an image of a cross to appear when they hit, I figured that would be an appropriate image to appear when a Shinto-made Sacred hits.

Given Yomiko's civilian identity as a substitute school teacher, I'm surprised I haven't seen a ROD/SM crossover anywhere. It's certainly easy enough to make her path cross the Senshi's (If you don't mind them getting buried under a mountain of reading assignments). However, as the Secret Service of the British Royal Library doesn't fit with the story I'm planning, The Paper will probably not be reappearing.

Thanks to Taeniaea, Shadow Crystal Mage, BeastialSunStormDragon and Tovath for the reviews.


	8. A Glitch in Time

Disclaimer: Sailor Moon is the property of Naoko Takuechi. Chrono Crusade is the property of Daisuke Moriyama.

Child of Hope

By Bissek

Chapter 7

A Glitch in Time

Kaolinite ground her teeth in frustration. Her latest attempt at a heart crystal grab was the most humiliating failure yet. Not only had the Readman woman managed to shield herself from every attack the daimon made, she had done it without ever taking her eyes off the book she was reading! At least the previous targets had shown the courtesy of openly noticing that they were being attacked. The Witches 5 weren't even trying to conceal the contempt they felt for someone whose target didn't deem worthy of looking up her book to acknowledge. Kaolinite knew in her heart that if she failed again the Witches 5 would go beyond insubordination to open rebellion.

However, Kaolinite's subordinates had focused so much on the peculiar actions of the bibliomaniac that they didn't really pay attention to the far more worrying part of that incident. Namely, the fact that the police now had weapons that could harm daimons. They weren't as powerful as the Senshi, but there were a lot more cops in Juuban than there were Senshi, and could be in a lot more places at once. Perhaps she could use this to her advantage…

Yes, that was it. She would have Eudial stage her own attack someplace where the police were likely to notice, and go seeking some targets for herself in a different location. With attention drawn to Eudial, she would be able to do a quick hit-and-run attack and be able to report a success to the Professor. Meanwhile, Eudial would encounter victims capable of fighting back and would be the one getting humiliated for a change. With their leader successful and one of their own beaten, the Witches 5 wouldn't be quite so fast to plot a coup against her.

Smiling to herself, Kaolinite started to work out the details of her little plot.

* * *

**Evening, a few days later…**

The restaurant was a fairly small place, located within a few blocks of several local businesses, and mainly served to the employees of those businesses after they closed up shop. The food it served was of decent quality and priced reasonably given the high cost of living in Tokyo. The owners made a decent living off of their business, if not an overly prosperous one. There was nothing to suggest that a battle was going to be waged there this night. But that is ultimately what happened when Yuuko Arimura, AKA Eudial of the Witches 5, decided to show up there.

Eudial was pleased to be finally allowed to serve the Death Buster cause in the field, but was also suspicious of the fact that her so-called superior was willing to do so. Kaolinite had been continually failing to gain any heart crystals for some time. Her ability to gather critical intelligence was being outdone by the local newspaper. Why would she give someone else the chance to prove they were better than her?

The only explanation Eudial could think of was that she was somehow being set up to fail. Kaolinite knew something that could affect the result of the mission, and was withholding it so that another's failures would weaken the appearance of her own. If that was the case, then Eudial needed some way to ensure that she'd be able to escape whatever trap she was walking into.

Noting an alleyway near the restaurant, Eudial had an idea.

* * *

**Near Tokyo Tower…**

Kaolinite arrived at her destination and started looking around for potential victims. She had sent Eudial to attack an area within a ten minute walk of a police station. Once her attack started, she'd be quickly attacked by the newly armed patrolmen, and all of the police would converge on that attack, leaving the area Kaolinite was in open for hunting.

The area was virtually empty. The only people she could see were a young couple who were apparently on a date. Deciding that seizing their heart crystals would go a long way in reinforcing her position within the Death Busters whether they had talismans or not, she readied herself to attack.

* * *

**Usagi and Mamoru…**

It was a quiet night, with no school the following day, so Usagi and Mamoru had taken the opportunity to spend the evening together. It was nice to just be a couple every now and then, without the complications of their actions in previous lives, their destiny in the future and the frequent dangers of their double lives interfering. Unfortunately, what started as a pleasant date wasn't going to end as one.

The young couple froze when they recognized the woman who was walking towards them. Hitting the alarm buttons on their communicators, they started to step aside so that Kaolinite could pass by on the way to wherever she was planning to launch her next daimon attack. Once the Senshi gathered, they could follow her and deal with whatever she was planning.

Neither of them expected their enemy to head straight for them and abruptly rip Usagi's heart crystal from her body without any daimons, melodramatic speeches, or any of the other things that were part of the normal monster-attack routine.

* * *

**Eudial…**

Eudial had her daimon launch its attack on two men who left the restaurant. Both men jumped out of the way of the attack, drawing pistols as they climbed to their feet. Eudial had to wonder at that. What did they expect bullets to do to a daimon? And how did these people get guns anyway?

Eudial had yet to learn that the police had access to Sacreds. She also didn't know that the restaurant's main clients at this time of night were policemen going off-duty. As such, the odds that somebody at the restaurant was armed with a weapon that was an actual threat were fairly high. That was a key point in the trap that Kaolinite had set for her rebellious subordinate.

Eudial gaped as the bullets fired from the guns caused the daimon to bellow in pain and fall back. Realizing that this was what Kaolinite was hoping would make her fail, she called out a command to the daimon and they retreated to the alleyway. It was time for plan B.

Meanwhile, the two officers reloaded their weapons and called out to some other officers in the restaurant to call for backup. Then, thankful for the fact that they had been issued something that could actually hurt the monsters (and had been ordered to carry them 24/7), they headed to the alleyway.

* * *

**Kaolinite…**

The girl gasped in pain and fell over as Kaolinite seized the heart crystal. She then turned and tried to do the same to the young man. However, he managed to jump clear of the attack. Again and again she tried to take down her target, but he continued to be able to dodge her attacks. Just when she finally managed to get him backed into a corner, she heard a cry of "Crescent Beam Shower!" and laser bolts started raining down on her.

Kaolinite looked around and saw that Sailor Venus had arrived, and that several other Senshi were fast approaching. There was no easy way to get clear and deliver her prize to the Professor, so she had to find a way to deal with them. Perhaps if she could find a way to pick them off one at a time… Kaolinite turned and ran for the tower. She had to make it to the top and pick the Senshi off as the climbed up the stairs near the landing. She still had a few daimon eggs that she could use to help deal with these girls once and for all.

When Kaolinite started up the stairs, Mamoru transformed into Tuxedo Kamen. Then he picked up Usagi's unconscious body and started to follow the Inners to the tower. Time was of the essence, and the delay of climbing both up and down the Tower to return the heart crystal could get Usagi killed. A quick word to Uranus and Neptune as they arrived caused them to join the party heading after Kaolinite.

Chrono was the last person to arrive at the scene. Seeing the Senshi climbing the tower, he came to the conclusion that an enemy was heading to the top of the tower for some reason. Choosing to take the fastest possible route, he returned to his true form. Seconds later, he flew to the top of the tower, reverted to his human guise, and waited.

* * *

**Eudial…**

The two officers entered the alleyway. Under the impression that the daimon they had encountered would be trying to run away, they were less interested in caution than they were in speed. This turned out to be a fatal mistake.

Eudial and the demon jumped out from the other side of the alley and took the patrolmen by surprise. One had its heart crystal ripped out by the daimon, the other by Eudial's Fire Buster. Eudial then collected the crystals and examined them. No talisman in either of them, but the power that could be gained from them would still be useful. Already she was accomplishing more than Kaolinite had. A third policeman entered the alley and the daimon went forward to kill its next victim.

* * *

**Kaolinite…**

Kaolinite gasped for breath as she finally reached the top of the stairs. She gazed into the crystal she had managed to seize, and was disappointed in what she saw.

"No talisman in this one, either." She muttered.

"Then why don't you put it back where you found it – _right now._" A voice ordered.

Spinning around, she saw the man responsible for two of her more recent humiliations glaring at her. Looking at his red glow coming from his eyes, which covered the entire white of the eye and made it difficult to see the pupil at all, she realized that this was most definitely not a trick of the light. And that meant that whatever Chrono was, he certainly wasn't human. The Professor would have to be informed of the fact that some unknown alien race was standing against the Death Busters. That knowledge might help bolster her dominance over the Witches 5. But in order to do that, she would have to deal with the opponent facing her now. She dropped the crystal into her bag and pulled out a storage container. Releasing the three daimon eggs stored within, she watched as they inhabited three sets of binoculars on the landing, and then ordered them to attack.

Once again, Chrono's reaction to the attack showed that he had been fighting monsters for quite some time. The first of the three daimons was cut down before it could even try to attack him. Then he attempted to confront Kaolinite, but was blocked by the other two. As Chrono managed to deal with one of them, Kaolinite seized the chance and launched an attack of her own at him. The attack didn't do much damage, but it did knock him back, causing him to trip over the remains of the first daimon. The final daimon took advantage of the opening and managed to seize Chrono's heart crystal. As her enemy collapsed, Kaolinite ordered the daimon to finish him off.

* * *

**Eudial...**

The third officer managed to get off several rounds at the daimon before it closed. Although it was weakened, it was still able to seize the man's heart crystal. However, a fourth officer had entered the alley at this point, and his fire was able to finish off the already weakened daimon. The daimon reverted to its original form, falling on and crushing the third officer's heart crystal in the process.

The officer then looked down the alley and saw Eudial. Eudial was about to use her Fire Buster on the man when she heard the sound of police sirens. She wouldn't have time to claim the heart crystal after removing it before even more policemen arrived, and if she left it behind they'd just replace it and then the police would know what she looked like, which would hinder any further operations. She'd have to kill him another way. She set aside the Fire Buster for her flamethrower, and blasted the man with a gout of flame. Then she darted out of the alley.

After she had gotten a good distance away from the scene of the crime, she slowed to a walk and headed back to her van. She hadn't found a talisman, but she still had managed to claim two heart crystals. The Professor would be pleased.

* * *

**Kaolinite…**

Before the killing blow could fall, a sphere of electricity was launched from the direction of the stairwell, knocking the daimon away from Chrono. Sailors Jupiter, Mars, Venus, Uranus and Neptune came up to the landing, followed shortly after by Tuxedo Kamen and Sailor Mercury, who were carrying the unconscious body of the girl Kaolinite had attacked earlier. The two stragglers set the girl down and then joined their comrades in facing the daimon and its controller.

The daimon wasn't able to hold out for very long. It quickly found itself entangled in a chain produced by Venus, then stabbed when Uranus picked up one of the knives Chrono had dropped after being beaten. That let all the Senshi turn their attention to Kaolinite.

Kaolinite was barely able dodge a pair of strikes from Mars and Mercury. The railing behind her ended up getting superheated and then flash frozen, rendering it cracked and brittle. Kaolinite managed to get up a defensive shield just before getting hit by a sphere of water launched by Neptune, only to find herself completely surrounded.

Her plan of taking the Senshi out one at a time ruined by the delay caused by Chrono, Kaolinite now simply tried to break through the group and run. It was a doomed effort. Every time she tried to attack one of the Senshi, someone else would hit her in the flank. Attempting to just run past two of them resulted in being intercepted by either Uranus or Kamen, each of them wielding one of Chrono's blades. Every blow weakened the shield she had placed on herself, and she had yet to land a significant blow on any of them. Finally, a combined attack from the four Inners shattered the shield. Uranus followed up by dropping the knife and launching a World Shaking. Kaolinite was sent flying through the air, her hands instinctively trying to grab onto anything that might anchor her. Her left hand grasped something, and she gripped tightly onto it in the hopes that it might stop her.

* * *

**Neptune…**

Sailor Neptune cried out in pain and shock as the flying Death Buster grabbed onto her hair. The surprise turned into panic when she found herself getting pulled along with her enemy. Kaolinite's body smashed into the section of railing that had taken the brunt of Mercury and Mars' combined attack. Having been rendered brittle by the sudden heating and freezing, the railing shattered, causing both Senshi and Death Buster to fall off the tower.

* * *

**Chrono…**

The attack from the daimon had hurt. Having that much Astral forced from his body had weakened him considerably. Were it not for the fact that his horns continued to feed Astral into his system, he would have lost consciousness. Weaker than he ever felt, Chrono struggled to his hands and knees and focused his eyes on the heart crystal that had been taken from him and now lay unnoticed on the floor. Slowly, he started crawling towards it, as a battle raged around him.

Just when he had managed to reach the crystal and return to his body, he heard a scream. Looking up, he saw Neptune fall off the tower. Climbing to his feet, Chrono shifted to his true form and called forth his greatest power.

* * *

**The Gate of Time…**

While the other Senshi were in battle, Sailor Pluto was attending to her primary duty of guarding the Gate of Time. The Black Moon Family had caused more than enough trouble when they had messed with the time stream the previous year, and such an incident couldn't be allowed to repeat itself. Suddenly, the Gate let loose a high pitched squeal. The sound, combined with the feedback going through the link between the Gates and their Guardian, drove Pluto to her knees. The noise faded after a time, but Pluto could still feel something inherently wrong with the Gate.

Somehow, somewhere, somebody had managed to warp the natural flow of space-time. The disruption was making time at one point flow at a significantly different rate than the rest of the Solar System. The Gate wasn't intended to handle such an unnatural occurrence, and the squeal was the sound of the artifact trying to compensate.

The last time this had happened was seventy four years ago, when the flow of time around an entire building and the surrounding environs simply _stopped_ for three and a half years. There had been a few isolated incidents happening around that time, but they lasted for minutes at most and stopped happening around the time the largest incident finally ended. Pluto had never found the cause of those incidents, or their remedy.

Now, on top of the immediate problems the Senshi were facing, they were happening again. Pluto vowed that she would find the source of this menace and deal with it once and for all, before these disruptions could cause permanent damage to the Gate.

* * *

**Back on Tokyo Tower…**

Uranus gaped in horror. In defeating Kaolinite, she had inadvertently killed Michiru. Her partner and lover was gone. She fell to her knees and wept, not noticing the wave of energy that caused the air to ripple rushing past her, or the gasps of the other Senshi as that happened.

Why had she wasted so much time lusting over that bike? How could she have neglected her love in favor of a piece of machinery? She wished that she could make it up to Michiru, but it was too late… too late…

She was about to find yet another subject to add to her internal monologue of self-loathing when a voice cut into her thoughts.

"Don't worry. Michiru is fine." Chrono said.

"How…" Uranus was going to ask 'How can you say that?' when she realized that he said _Michiru_, not _Neptune_. She changed her question to "do you know her name?"

"You girls make a point of not speaking your given names out loud, but you still think of each other by your real names." He replied.

The Senshi as a group froze. Their new ally had openly admitted to plucking their identities right out of their heads. Each of them considered the implications of someone who could read minds. Did this mean that he knew (Insert name) was really (Insert Senshi ID)?

"It does now," Chrono replied, "Though I hope that Odango-atama isn't your friend's real name." pointing to Usagi's unmoving form.

Mars blushed as she realized that she just told Chrono the nickname she used for Odan-err, Usagi. Then her eyes narrowed. What kind of secrets had he pried from her mind when they had met at the shrine?

"And as for your friend," He continued, walking over to the broken railing and pointing down, "Take a look for yourselves."

Uranus forced herself to look down where her partner had fallen. But instead of a pair of broken bodies lying far below, what she saw was far different.

What she saw was a statue of Sailor Neptune, frozen in midair. Hanging from the head of the statue was Kaolinite, looking extremely uncomfortable in the position she had ended up in. A position she could not change, since her hand was embedded in Neptune's petrified hair.

Mercury had her visor down and was scanning both Chrono and the floating statue. The readings she was getting from both were extremely odd.

"How did this happen?" She asked.

"I have stopped the flow of time around her body. She will remain there, frozen in a moment, until I release the spell. If the spell remains, she will stay at that very spot, not falling so much as an inch, long after this tower turns to rust."

"So, would releasing the spell cause her to start falling from rest?" Mercury was trying to figure out how to get Neptune safely down. Causing her to fall for a short time then stop over and over seemed to be a good way to do that.

Uranus perked up when she realized that Michiru was still alive. She considered the plan that Mercury was implying. The only problem she could see is that it would also spare Kaolinite from the fall. But they could always have somebody waiting for her on the ground…

"I'm afraid not. Once time restarts for her, she'll continue falling at the same velocity she was traveling when time froze. But if we can get a rope, we can pull her up once I release the spell."

Venus produced her chain. While she was getting the chain looped around the Neptune statue, Chrono reclaimed his knifes and searched through Kaolinite's bag. There wasn't much in it. Neptune's attack had splashed over the bag, ruining any fingerprints that might have been on it and rendering a small notebook totally illegible. There wasn't any form of ID in the bag that could be used to track the owner, either. Chrono found the heart crystal that had been stolen from Usagi, which was quickly returned, and the container that Kaolinite stored her daimon eggs in. He'd have Shader examine it later. Then he went to help the Senshi retrieve their falling comrade.

* * *

**Kaolinite…**

Kaolinite had intended for her dying thought to be that at least she had managed to take one of the Senshi with her. That thought died when the law of inertia suddenly decided that it only applied to some people and not others.

The body of the Senshi she had pulled to her death abruptly stopped. The hair that Kaolinite was gripping suddenly became immovably hard, trapping her hand in a stone-like grip. Unfortunately, Kaolinite's own body was not included in this sudden exemption from physics, and the fact that her body was trying to move downward and horizontally while her hand was trapped in something that refused to move at all resulted in an extremely painful result. At the end of it, Kaolinite found herself with her fingers, hand, and wrist all broken and/or dislocated and that abused appendage being the only thing keeping her from falling.

Looking up, Kaolinite saw that the Senshi had literally turned to stone, and that the stone Senshi was casually ignoring the law of gravity. She couldn't get free, because stone hair had encased itself around her fingers. She couldn't move to a more comfortable position, as that would involve putting more force on her wrist, and she could barely stand the pain she was already suffering from that. All she could do was hang in place, and curse her enemies and the so-called allies that had gotten her into this mess.

She could hear her enemies talking about something above her, but couldn't make out any words. After a while, a chain came down from the tower and looped around the statue. While Kaolinite was wondering what the Senshi were planning to do to the strangely immovable object, the statue suddenly turned back into flesh, and her damaged fingers lost their grip on the no longer stone hair. Kaolinite began falling again, from a slightly lesser height.

This time, the only thing to stop her fall was the ground.

* * *

**The top of the tower…**

The moment Chrono released the spell on Neptune, the chain that he and several members of the Senshi were holding on to became taught. Working together, they were able to pull her back up to the landing in short order. After Neptune got the chain off, she was immediately embraced by a relived Uranus. Shortly after that, Usagi regained consciousness, and was quickly swarmed by the Inners. Chrono quietly headed down the stairs.

When Chrono got to the ground, he went to where Kaolinite fell. There was a rather large spot of pavement with cracks radiating around it, about what one would expect if something weighing more than a hundred pounds hit at high speed. But there wasn't a body. Considering the odds that somebody could take a fall like that, land on pavement, and then walk away to be rather unlikely, Chrono realized that someone else must have removed it.

While listening in to Kaolinite's thoughts while she hung in the air (hearing the Senshi's thoughts was more incidental), he had heard mention of several colleagues of hers. One of them must have shown up and taken Kaolinite. Given some of the more profanely punctuated thoughts that had been running through her head, it was doubtful that the cause of that action was due to loyalty. Either way, it meant that he couldn't identify who this Kaolinite person really was, so he couldn't hope to trace her group from that ID, either.

Climbing onto the Tindalos, Chrono returned home.

* * *

**At the site of the other battle…**

Captain Aritomo Fujita looked at the alleyway. All four of his officers who had faced the monster had been taken to the hospital. Three of them were in a peculiar coma, and the fourth was covered in severe burns. From the crushed crystal that was half-buried under the bullet-ridden hulk of what had been a monster, it looked like the first three had had their heart crystals taken. It was somewhat fortunate that this also implied that the crystals had been destroyed instead of taken by whoever sent the daimon.

On the one hand, it meant that the criminals responsible for this were no better off than they were before. On the other, it meant that three of his men would soon be dead, no matter what happened.

This was the second time the bullet design provided by Chrono had been used. The first time, it had weakened the attacking monster until a Senshi could finish it off. The second time, the Sacreds had defeated the daimon outright, but not before it took all of the officers confronting it with it.

Walking away from the scene, Aritomo resolved to find a way to deal with these creatures once and for all. Hopefully a way that didn't get half the precinct killed in the process.

* * *

**The following morning…**

After Chrono had managed to casually expose Neptune's real name, the Inners and Outers had finally gotten around to properly introducing themselves to each other. The day after the attack, all nine of the currently active Senshi met at the Hikawa Shrine to discuss their ever more mysterious ally. Several of the Senshi apparently hadn't had much sleep the previous night.

Usagi's lack of sleep was understandable. She had very nearly gotten killed the night before. Ami had also lost sleep last night. From the look on her face, she appeared to be puzzled about something. Setsuna's weary face bore the look of somebody who was worried about something. It was the look on Haruka and Michiru's sleepy faces that Rei didn't get. They had also come close to death in the last fight, so why were they grinning?

"Alright, let's get this meeting started. This Chrono person is getting more and more unusual every time he crosses our path. He runs a company, but has the spare time to hunt monsters and befriend lonely children. He somehow managed to come to the conclusion that our fukus are habits and that Artemis is a trained attack animal." That comment brought chuckles all around. "He managed to keep moving after losing his heart crystal. He can read minds. Then there's that trick he used to save Michiru last night. The question is: Who or what is he really?"

Rei then went on to describe the visions she had had about Chrono, and their apparent contradiction with what little he had spoken of during their meeting on the roof of the hospital. Ami spoke next.

"I've looked up what I could about his company, and there's virtually no information at all. It doesn't recruit, doesn't advertise, and doesn't look for investors. As far as I can tell, any further investigation on that lead is a dead end. What I learned by scanning him was far more unusual.

"From what I can tell, Chrono is human, but at the same time he isn't. It's as if something totally alien was overlaid on top of a human being. I'm not sure what could do that or how, but whatever it was, it's made him incredibly powerful. And his full power was somehow being masked by something while I was scanning. If I had to guess, I'd say that using those knifes of his actually weakens him. There's much more power in his body than there is in his weapons."

"But why would he deliberately handicap himself?" Minako wondered.

"Here's another thing," Mamoru commented. "Chrono was at the top of the tower when we got there. But Usako and I had passed by the tower earlier and that bike of his wasn't there. When we all started climbing the tower, the bike wasn't there. But when we were climbing down the tower, I saw the bike leave. He was the last one of us to show up to that fight. So how did he get up there before us, without passing us on the stairwell?"

"However he did it, if he hadn't been there, there'd have been Kaolinite and three daimons waiting for us instead of Kaolinite and one daimon facing another direction," Makoto pointed out. "If he hadn't taken out half of them before we got there and had the others facing the wrong way, the fight would have been a lot harder. And Michiru could have died if he hadn't saved her with that time freezing spell…"

"If he hadn't **_WHAT!_**" Setsuna shouted.

Ami explained what had happened with Michiru during the fight. Setsuna looked even more worried.

"Freezing time is my most powerful ability." She said. "It's also forbidden, as the feedback from the Time Gate could kill me if I ever did it. Last night the Time Gate started malfunctioning as the result of somebody tampering with the flow of space-time. And you're saying that this Chrono person is the one who did it?" The others nodded. "Then he's a threat. Seventy years ago somebody tampering with the flow of time manage to lock a place out of the normal flow of time for three years. The feedback nearly damaged the Gate permanently. There's no telling what might happen if such reckless tampering happens again. And since this person isn't affected by what he does to the time stream, it would be easy for him to be tempted into doing something foolish."

"But Puu-chan, isn't Chrono trying to help us?" Chibi-Usa asked.

"He could very well do more damage trying to help us than are enemies do while trying to kill us."

"Setsuna! I will not permit you to harm an ally because of what he _might_ do. If you want to speak with him about why he shouldn't use that power, do so, but you are not to act against him unless he becomes more than just a _possible_ threat." That was Usagi, the Serenity side of her nature peeking out of the ditzy girl trying to read Rei's manga and devour Makoto's baked goods.

Having received a direct order from her princess, Setsuna had no choice to obey. However, it was obvious that she had no intention of trusting this newcomer anytime soon. The meeting continued, without anything else of significance being discovered.

After her friends left, Rei started attending to her Shrine duties. While she was doing that, a visitor came to the shrine. He appeared to be about 16, maybe 17 years old. He was wearing a long grey coat and sunglasses. His long black hair covered his ears. He walked up to Rei and addressed her.

"Good morning Hino-san," He said. "We met last night at Tokyo Tower, but I never got the chance to introduce myself. My name is Joshua Remington."

Rei froze. She hadn't been at Tokyo Tower last night – but Sailor Mars had. Then Joshua brushed back his hair to reveal a highly pointed ear, and took off his glasses to reveal a familiar pair of red eyes, one of which winked at her.

* * *

**Death Buster HQ…**

Kaolinite slowly regained consciousness. Her left hand was heavily bandaged. She tried to rise, but suddenly realized that she couldn't feel her legs. She looked around and realized that Professor Tomoe was in the room.

"You have failed me again, Kaolinite." He said. From the tone it was obvious that the Germatroid part of his personality was dominant over the Souichi part.

"I sent Tellu to check up on your progress on last night's hunt. Funny how the first thing she saw after arriving was the sight of you getting thrown out of Tokyo Tower and breaking your spine on the landing. It's doubtful you'll ever walk again."

"Professor, that man Chrono… he's not…" She tried to let her leader know what she had learned of.

"I've had enough of your excuses." Tomoe interrupted. "You've failed to get any heart crystals, with or without talismans. You've failed to deal with any of my enemies. You've failed to get me any intelligence I couldn't learn from the newspaper. Eudial managed to return with two heart crystals last night; she'll be taking over field operations.

"I'd just have you killed, but the information that Eudial brought back on the police becoming equipped to fight daimons means that if your body turns up and somebody identifies you as an agent of the Death Busters, the police might track you back to me.

"You will be spending your days in the lab, trying to create stronger strains of daimons. I'll tell my people at Mugen Gakuen that you're working on a special project for me full time. That will prevent any questions about your injuries." With that, Professor Tomoe left.

Kaolinite seethed. Her plan had backfired. Eudial had succeeded while she had failed. Now the Witches 5 would gain influence while she was relegated to the background. She cursed her fate and hoped that some day she'd get an opportunity to gain revenge.

* * *

**Narita International Airport…**

"Business or pleasure?" The customs agent asked the old woman.

"Pleasure. My brother-in-law is here for business, and I'm paying him a visit." She replied.

A few questions later, the customs agent stamped the passport, saying "Welcome to Tokyo, Christopher-san".

Azmaria passed through and waited for Beth to also go through customs. It was time for a long overdue reunion with an old friend.

* * *

A/N: The formatting of this chapter is a little different from normal, but in this chapter I had to do multiple concurrent events from multiple viewpoints.

The dramatic transformation of Chrono from human to demon form with the screaming, the streams of black energy flowing from his body and all that is only really necessary when he forces the seal open on his own. When Chrono first meets Satella in volume 3, she accidentally drops a wall on his head. Rosette breaks the seal and Chrono transforms in time to catch it with one hand. Now that the seal no longer exists, he can do the quick transformation any time. He's more than capable of switching to his demon form, using his time freeze technique, and reverting before anyone turns around to look at him.

In the manga, Chrono is capable of breaking the time freeze spell on his own without using Aion's horns. I'm choosing to believe that he has to be in his true form to cast the spell, but not to undo it.

Having the Time Gate malfunction when time is stopped is my own idea, but it seems like a sensible reason as to why doing it would be lethal to its guardian.

I know that 'Joshua Remington' isn't exactly the most deceptive of aliases Chrono could have chosen, but he's not exactly in the habit of using secret identities.

My thanks to Shadow Crystal Mage, Taeniaea and Ten-Faced Paladin for the reviews.


	9. Worries

Disclaimer: Sailor Moon is the property of Naoko Takuechi. Chrono Crusade is the property of Daisuke Moriyama.

Child of Hope

By Bissek

Chapter 8

Worries

Sailor Pluto stood before the Gate of Time. It appeared to have recovered from having the fabric of space-time warped for a few minutes. The effects of Neptune's unusual salvation hadn't had nearly the same magnitude of impact that the incident that had happened seventy-odd years previous. Then again, this latest incident only froze a person instead of an area, and stopped after a few minutes instead of a few years.

Still, that didn't mean that there couldn't be damage too minute for Pluto to detect at the moment. Damage that might get worse if these incidents continued happening. One small crack in a wall might not appear to be that dangerous, but given time that crack could expand and become a major weakness in the integrity of the building. It was Pluto's duty to see to it that any potential cracks in the Gate didn't expand to become a danger to the safety of the Gate. Thanks to Makoto, Pluto now knew the identity of the person currently posing a threat to her charge. Unfortunately, three things prevented her from dealing with that threat directly.

The first thing was that her connection to the Gate made it impossible for her to confront Chrono in person. Whenever the flow of space-time was distorted, the feedback from the Gate as it struggled to compensate drove her to her knees in agony. Unless she was certain to take him down with one strike, he could freeze anything, and the pain would incapacitate her long enough for him to finish her off. In order to make an attack against Chrono likely to succeed, she'd need backup from the rest of the Senshi.

The second thing was that the Princess had ordered him left alone. Several of the Senshi were suspicious of the newcomer's past and abilities, but there was no actual proof that he was more than just a potential threat at the moment. Without that proof, they were unable to do anything to remove the potential threat before it became a real one.

The final thing was that Pluto had no clue how extensive his time freeze ability was. Apparently what he did to Neptune froze her but didn't freeze the Death Buster holding on to her. That could mean either a limited ability, or high control, and Pluto couldn't tell. If Chrono was capable of a distortion like the one from 1921, then any attempt to kill him could turn the Sailor Senshi into Sailor Statuary.

This was why Pluto was using the Gate at this time. She needed to see if there was any evidence she could use against Chrono, and she needed some way to judge the extent of his powers before any confrontation actually happened. Unfortunately, she couldn't risk setting the Gate to view an area where time had frozen, or even that area shortly before or after that moment. There was too much of a chance that the Gate would malfunction. She also couldn't get the Gate to lock on to a person, just a point in space-time.

As a result of this, Pluto was forced to have the Gate view a moment when she knew where Chrono was, and then keep the Gate moving so that it remained centered on his location. She did this on the four days where she had an exact time and place for the man at some point in the day and did not stop time: The day he killed the bench daimon, the day he helped Uranus and Moon with the motorcycle daimon, the day he met with the rest of the Senshi, and the day he had Haruka test his bike. Tracing each day forwards and backwards, she saw something very strange.

Chrono's apartment looked more like a place where one stayed rather than a place where one lived. There was a simple reason for this: He didn't actually live there. Every morning he emerged from a door that by rights should lead to a closet, and every evening he returned to that door. The door itself opened to a strange portal that lead to someplace else. Because the Gate could only track the location and not a person at that location, Pluto couldn't follow Chrono to wherever he was going.

Unfortunately, the fact that he had a secret hideout didn't prove he was doing anything wrong there. It was proof that he was unusual and needed to be looked into, but Pluto already knew that. She stopped viewing Chrono's actions in fast forward and started viewing his actions in real-time, so as to listen in to his conversations.

She noted that Chrono stated that his family had started hunting monsters a hundred twenty five years previous. That gave her a time mark to start looking into his family's background if she could find out where he came from originally. She skipped ahead to the briefing he gave to the police.

Chrono had been right about one thing: Demons had been real. They first appeared right after the fall of the Silver Millennium. Pluto had always assumed that they were something that had gotten loose on Earth because of something Beryl had done. She had never been able to figure out exactly where they came from. Then they stopped showing up after 1924. Pluto hadn't stopped to think about what caused their disappearance. She had been too busy worrying about the major time distortion that had hit around that time period, only to end around the time that a meteor landed in the Atlantic, causing a tidal wave that wrecked a sizable part of New York, a strange Aurora Borealis manifestation occurred in Seattle, and the permanent Aurora affect that formed a ring around the entire planet over the course of the next seven years started showing up. That ring of light was still there more than sixty years after it finished forming. Nobody had ever managed to explain either phenomenon. Between helping the Gate recover from the massive shock and trying to see if any of those events were likely to cause something that would prevent the Senshi from reawakening, the demons had slipped her mind.

Now that Pluto thought about it, the last time she has felt a time distortion had been from the Seattle area, around the time of that Aurora incident. That had been minutes after the three year time distortion finally ended. What if one of Chrono's ancestors had been the source of that? If some of his family had been there, it would explain how he seemed to know all the details of a battle she had never heard of. It would also explain how he managed to acquire a weapon that had belonged to a demon that had been there. It would also explain how he knew what kind of weapons exorcists used back in the 1920s.

If that was the case, then Chrono couldn't possibly be highly experienced with his power, as nobody had used that power until seventy years before he used it on Neptune. On the other hand, he had managed to use it with incredible precision on that first attempt. That was a worrying thought.

Pluto skipped ahead to the meeting with the other Senshi. Watching Chrono's face as he made what was probably the single most bizarre assumption that Pluto had ever seen or heard of in her entire life (which was really saying something), she realized that he had been quite serious about his question. Taking the old pistol that he had showed to the police – a _Magdalan_ Government - into account, Pluto was able to draw some conclusions.

Chrono's family had had some long-standing association with the Order of Mary Magdala. Some perverted old man (Why else would he be called 'Elder' and want nuns to wear miniskirts?) had tried to make them wear armored miniskirts at a time when Chrono was working with them alongside a girl named Rosette, now deceased (And whose death Chrono was obviously still mourning). Sometime after Rosette's death from something – she couldn't say what, as Rei's vision implied murder while Chrono's story stated disease – the association ended (Otherwise he wouldn't have wondered if the skirts had been reissued). Pluto now had a place where some of Chrono's past might be recorded: The Catholic Church.

Pluto had to wonder about the bit about the alleged demon slaughtering Nazis. Hitler's fascination with the occult was fairly well known, so anything as obviously paranormal as a demon killing his men would have been picked up by historians reporting on that fascination. There hadn't been. The only way Chrono could have known of that incident happening, if it did, was if some relative of his had witnessed it, and had chosen to do nothing about it. Was it just because the relative didn't care about the victims, or was there some connection between the demon and demon hunter?

Continuing onward, Pluto watched as Chrono prepared his pseudo-home for his dinner guest, who Pluto guessed to be Small Lady's friend Hotaru. After a while, a woman came out of the portal, which turned out to be Chrono's sister Shader. Pluto watched as Shader tried to cuddle Hotaru to death as she entered the apartment, and then stopped to examine some of Hotaru's artificial parts. Pluto was amazed at Shader's reaction to Hotaru's prosthetics. The casual offer to give the girl an upgrade was a major commitment for what was apparently a family-run business, and yet Shader thought nothing of it, and apparently neither did Chrono. Pluto got a hint as to why Chrono wanted to keep a connection to the girl after dinner.

The implications of what Chrono claimed Hotaru's powers could do struck Pluto like a thunderbolt. Had Beryl been able to get control of someone with that kind of power she'd have been unstoppable. If Chrono was right on that, then Hotaru was likely to become even more of a target than Usagi's friend Naru (Nobody had ever figured out why she got attacked all the time either. Could there be a connection?). Pluto resolved to make sure that Small Lady knew about the potential danger that Hotaru was in. Nobody would question two known friends spending time together often, and that would give the girl an occasional Senshi bodyguard.

After viewing the end of that evening and watching Chrono go through the day of the track testing of his bike, Pluto noticed Chrono pick up a large number of medical texts. It appeared that he was taking his sister's offer to replace Hotaru's artificial parts seriously. After he carted the books through the portal, Pluto stopped watching the Gate and went to investigate her lead.

Transporting herself to a records office where she could check the names of present and past members of the Magdalan order, Pluto ran into a mysterious dead end. Trying to find information about a blonde nun named Rosette who died recently while in her twenties, she found that the only Sister Rosette to be in that order in the past fifty years was black-haired, forty years old, and still alive.

* * *

Rei blinked, and took a second look at 'Joshua'. He had apparently changed his coat, tucked his hair braid down the coat to conceal it, put on a wig to cover his ears and unusual hair color, worn sunglasses to conceal his eye color, and… subtracted several years from his apparent age? The person who was apparently Chrono in disguise had somehow shifted his age from twenty-something to about sixteen. How in the world had he managed to do that? On top of that, what did this mean to what Rei thought she knew about the man? Her conclusions about the visions she'd had centered on the assumption that people only age in one direction. A Senshi might be able to do something like that temporarily using the disguise pen, but doing that would create a comprehensive disguise, not something that needed to be reinforced with a wig and colored glasses. 

Rei added Chrono's apparent ability to change his age at will to the list of mysteries about him. Considering the implications of that ability, she also added the question of how old he really was.

"May I ask why you've come, 'Joshua'?" She asked.

"The reason I came is because of the two members of your group that I have contact information for, you're the only one I can approach discreetly." He replied.

"Huh?" Chrono had openly admitted that he could read minds the night before. He knew the name of every Senshi that had been at the fight that night. How could he not know how to contact most of them?

"Telepathy doesn't work like you'd think. You can't rummage around in people's memories the way you'd go through a laundry bin looking for a favorite shirt. It's more like being trapped in a room where everyone else is saying whatever comes to their mind out loud.

"Because of that, what I learn from hearing thoughts is limited by the way you think. You and your friends refer to each other by personal names or nicknames, so that is all I heard. Without a last name, trying to find someone's address in the phone book is a wasted effort, even if your names were in the phone book, which at your age, they probably aren't. The only people I know the full names of are you, because we had met when I was examining shrines, and Ten'oh-san, because she was the test driver at the motorcycle demonstration I held a while back.

"And the reason you chose to talk with me instead of Haruka is…?" Rei inquired.

"If I show up anywhere as Chrono on a regular basis, the press is likely to wonder why. That's why I made this disguise. Since I can't pass myself as a racing enthusiast, I can't blend into her social circle. But if a young man shows up to pray at a shrine where a young miko works on a semi-regular basis, anyone who notices will assume that the young man is either religious or trying to hit on the miko. Neither of these is likely to draw much attention, and we both need to avoid that if we want to be able to get any work done."

Rei considered this. She remembered that when she wondered about whether or not he knew about Moon's real identity, he stated that he did – _now _– which implied that her thinking about it is what gave it away. She had never really considered how to work with an ally whose identity was common knowledge before, mainly because the Senshi (apart from Sailor V) hadn't had outside allies to work with before. This disguise Chrono came up with might enable the Senshi to remain in contact with him without exposing everyone's identities. On the other hand, it meant that sooner or later she was going to be teased by her grandfather, neighbors, and other regular shrine visitors about the boy that kept coming to see her. Once the rumors spread, the rest of the Inners (except for Ami) would probably join in the teasing just for fun. The advantages of this ruse helped everyone, but the disadvantages all seemed to fall on her. Terrific.

But the explanation only made sense if she assumed that Chrono was telling the truth about the limits of his mind reading abilities. Given that she had already found several parts of his story that just didn't add up, she wasn't willing to take what he was saying as absolute truth. Rei decided to ask some of her questions and see how far she could get.

"Some of us aren't exactly sure what to make of you." She began, trying to make it sound as if she was only wary instead of highly suspicious. "Pluto freaked when she found out that you could freeze time – something about an incident that happened seventy years ago. And some other things you've said about yourself don't add up."

"Who is Pluto? I don't recall her at any of our previous meetings."

"You haven't met her. She has a number of duties elsewhere."

"Please tell her that she doesn't need to worry. The parties responsible for the Seventh Bell Incident are all dead."

"The Seventh Bell Incident?"

"There's only one incident you could be referring to. In 1921 a boy at the Seventh Bell Orphanage in Michigan inadvertently gained access to powers he did not understand and could not control. He accidentally froze the entire orphanage in time and left it that way until he was stripped of those powers three and a half years later."

Rei paused. From a vague reference, Chrono had managed to both identify the incident and provide more detail than Pluto had off the top of his head. While that might be normal when he was explaining something that he knew he would be talking about, like he had when meeting with the Senshi on top of Juuban General Hospital, doing that with a topic he couldn't have known would be discussed until he got here implied that he had either a great memory or was highly familiar with the incident in question. And why would he be highly familiar with an incident that happened in the twenties? And Chrono had said _parties_, plural, but only mentioned one person.

Before she could continue down that train of thought Chrono inquired as to what he had said about his past that hadn't added up. When she explained about the difference between his version of Rosette's death and the vision she'd had. Chrono's abrupt reaction to her version was rather surprising.

"Do you have any idea of the risks you were taking?" He demanded. "You could have ended up just like Mary!"

"What?" Rei had never heard of the fire vision ritual being dangerous before. And who was Mary?

Chrono went on to explain. "Mary was a prophetess of extraordinary power. Her visions of what had been and what would be were incredibly accurate. She once told me that she knew my name before she learned her own, and had memorized the moment we would meet before she could walk. Quite an accomplishment, since at that time I didn't even know that I would ever set foot in her home country, and didn't know that she existed at all until about a week before we met.

"The problem was that her gift was too powerful. Visions would take her at any time and she could not control them. She spent so much time trapped in visions of the past and future that she often lost track of the present. Then one day, while her mind was out observing some possibility, something else moved into her head with her.

"I wanted to save her. I didn't have the skills or the equipment to exorcise the spirit, but I knew where there were people who did, and tried to get her to them. But my brother didn't care. As far as he was concerned, the fact that the woman who had been our friend for months was still in there was irrelevant. Mary's body was possessed by an enemy, so it had to be killed. He rejected the thought of saving a friend over the expediency of killing a potential enemy. He didn't even care that he had to punch straight through me to land the blow that killed her. It was Mary you saw in that vision, not Rosette."

Rei gulped. From the tone of Chrono's voice, and the look of grief and rage when he mentioned Mary's death, it was obvious that Chrono was either an incredible actor, or telling the truth. She had never considered the possibility that something like that might happen to her while consulting the Sacred Flame, but given some of the things the Outers had done shortly after their appearance, it wasn't too far fetched to assume that they might react like Chrono's brother if it did happen. Rei mentally resolved to set up some wards before the next time she sought a vision.

While Rei was contemplating the risks she had been unknowingly taken, Chrono took the opportunity to ask what Kaolinite had been talking about when she had mentioned a Talisman. Rei explained to him what she knew of the three Talismans which were concealed within the heart crystals of three unknown individuals. As she finished her explanation, she saw him shaking his head.

"So our enemies are looking for something that was hidden within a specific heart crystal generations ago? In that case, we don't have anything to worry about. The only way they'd ever find them is if they find the actual soul the artifact was originally sealed in, and since those people are all dead, those souls are lost forever. The Death Eaters are searching for something that no longer exists."

"What if they found the reincarnations of those original people?" Rei pointed out.

"Reincarnation is one of the sillier notions created by religion. It's a practical impossibility."

"_What?!_" Rei exclaimed. She had a hard time accepting the idea that reincarnation was impossible. Doing so would be to deny the life she had been living from the moment she first met a certain talking cat.

"Picture the Astral in a soul as the liquid in a small bottle of fruit punch, and the Astral Line as a river flowing at 5 mph," Chrono explained. "Now empty the bottle into the river, go to a point five miles downstream from that point an hour later, and refill the bottle. What are the odds that the bottle will be filled with fruit punch? That is roughly equivalent to what a reincarnation is.

"It's possible to do that in theory. But then, it's also possible in theory to find two perfectly identical snowflakes in a blizzard. But the likelihood of either event happening is so low that it might as well be impossible.

"Given how many people have been born and died over the course of human history, I suppose that it might be possible for one person, somewhere, to have been the reincarnation of some other person at some time. But it's far more likely that this person is the reincarnation of a virtual nobody, rather than a figure of historical importance such as Napoleon Bonaparte or Endymion of Atlas."

"Who?" Rei asked. Endymion was not a common name. He couldn't possibly be referring to _that_ Endymion. He just couldn't be…

"The man whose forces started the war that triggered the incident which created the demon race. The same incident also caused Atlas to sink beneath the waves. His homeland is now known as the legendary continent of Atlantis."

Rei realized that Chrono _was_ talking about Mamoru. And that Chrono had just accused him of causing a problem that had plagued humanity for several thousand years. She wanted to rip into Chrono for making that accusation, but doing so would involve revealing far too much about the Senshi's secrets, and keeping those would be hard enough when working with someone who openly admitted that he'd be listening to your thoughts whenever a fight broke out. Even with that restriction, the conversation still ended up degenerating into an argument, only over the topic of reincarnation instead of Usagi's boyfriend's past life. The argument ended with Rei storming off to do some work at a different part of the shrine while Chrono presumably left the shrine to establish 'Joshua Remington' as a real person in the eyes of various residents of the area.

How could he flatly state that reincarnation was impossible? The Senshi were living proof that the opposite was true. The entire team consisted of people from a long dead age born anew in the modern day after… Serenity sent them all forward to a time they would be needed…

Suddenly, Rei knew exactly where the Talismans were.

* * *

Professor Tomoe was going over some paperwork in his office at home. At the same time, Germatroid was thinking over the results of the battles of the previous night. 

The heart crystals that Eudial had returned with had not contained Talismans, but they had provided enough energy to replenish the reserves that had been drained by the weeks of fruitless operations that Kaolinite had been running. Even more important was the information that Eudial had returned with.

The police had been equipped with weapons that could harm the daimons. And even though their weapons were not nearly as effective as the ones wielded by the Senshi, the fact that they existed at all raised the number of enemies the Death Busters faced from less than a dozen to several hundred. Kaolinite had probably known of this before the battle, and had undoubtedly decided to use that knowledge in an attempt to humiliate her subordinates rather than reporting it to her superior. That Eudial had been able to succeed despite this betrayal was sufficient proof that she was far more worthy of handling field operations than Kaolinite. Germatroid would have to keep a closer eye on his crippled second-in-command. Even with her authority reduced by being restricted to support work, a subordinate who proved untrustworthy once could do so again. If that happened, she would not survive.

While Germatroid was pondering how deal with this development, the door opened and walked in. As Professor Tomoe was about to politely send the girl away, she spoke.

"I need to speak with you, Germatroid."

Germatroid/Tomoe looked at the child. The voice was Hotaru's but the tone it was spoken in was definitely not. Neither was the posture of the girl consistent with the frail and friendless child that Hotaru was. But then, it wasn't Hotaru that was speaking. It was Mistress 9.

Germatroid quickly took control of the Professor's body and addressed his leader.

"How may I serve you, Mistress?"

"We need to discuss this newcomer, this Chrono. He has interfered with too many of our operations."

Mistress 9 went on to describe what she knew of their enemy. When she got to the point of explaining how Chrono believed Hotaru's powers operated, Germatroid smiled. Chrono was right on one point – if they hadn't already had control over the girl, they would have gone to considerable effort to get it. Fortunately, they didn't have to. At the end, Germatroid offered a suggestion.

"Mistress, this Chrono seems dedicated to ensuring the safety of the Professor's daughter. Perhaps we can use this to maneuver him into a trap. One where even if he survives, all he will find will be you, standing in the place of the one he sought to rescue, ready to strike him down."

"Interesting… That plan is worthy of consideration. However, we can't use it right now. I don't have enough control over this body as yet to ensure that I can act as needed, and I also have the feeling that there is more to Chrono than we have currently seen. Until we can figure out what he's hiding, a direct confrontation could be too dangerous. You can prepare a detailed plan for our confrontation, but we won't be able to act on it for some time."

Mistress 9 might have gone on in more detail, but her control over her stolen body faltered. A few seconds later, Hotaru blinked her eyes and looked around in confusion.

"Uhh… Daddy? How did I get here?"

Germatroid quickly ceded control to Professor Tomoe, and let him see to his child.

"You had another seizure, dear. I've looked you over, and you should be fine with some rest. Come on, now. I'll help you to bed." With that, the Professor led his daughter away, while Germatroid continued planning the downfall of his enemy.

* * *

At Juuban General Hospital, Dr. Saeko Mizuno was filling out three death certificates. Despite her best efforts, the three comatose officers from the monster attack the previous night had all died without ever regaining consciousness. The fourth officer would likely survive, but would be in the hospital being treated for large scale third-degree burns for weeks. 

Saeko had become a doctor to save lives. The work was difficult, and took up long hours that forced her to spend far less time with her daughter than she would have liked, but it was an important responsibility that she took seriously. Losing patients was an unpleasant experience, especially when she didn't really understand what was killing them.

Her musings were interrupted by the telephone. Sighing in frustration, Saeko answered it.

"This is Dr. Mizuno"

"Dr. Mizuno? I'm Dr. Grunberg. I'm calling to discuss some patients you admitted to the hospital last night." The voice on the other end responded.

"I'm sorry Doctor, but I cannot disclose…"

Before Saeko could go any further, the woman on the other end of the line proceeded to describe the symptoms that the three dead men had gone through before dying. Since the report of the deaths had yet to leave the hospital, there was no way that the caller (Who was not from Juuban General or any other local hospital – there weren't that many doctors in the area with Western surnames) could have known about most of them.

"How did you…" She gasped.

"The symptoms I just described were from a case that I took on when I first became a doctor. I thought you might want to discuss that particular affliction with someone who had encountered it before."

A doctor with experience in this condition? Did that mean… "Do you know of a cure?" Saeko asked.

"I'm afraid not. I do have all the records from that case with me, however. Maybe you can succeed where I failed."

It might be too late for the three men from last night, but at least now Saeko had some hope for any people who might follow them.

"I'd be glad to meet with you, Doctor."

* * *

A/N: Sorry it took so long to update, but 1: I got stuck during the Rei/Chrono conversation, and 2: I got sidetracked by writing the first 2 chapters of my new fic, a Noir/Evangelion crossover entitled The Black Hands of NERV

Threat to the Gate or not, Pluto can't take Chrono alone, and the Senshi as a whole won't confront him while Usagi forbids it. So Pluto's first priority is to convince Usagi to revoke that prohibition. The restrictions on Pluto's usage of the Gate I came up with to prevent her from learning too much about Chrono too fast.

The 'Aurora Borealis' and 'meteor' are the official explanation for the most visible events that happened during Pandaemonium, namely the tidal wave at New York and the manifestation of the Astral Line near Seattle. A few people might have been close enough to the coast to see what really caused the tidal wave, but most of them were probably washed away, and the rest of them would be telling a story far more surreal (if more accurate) than Impact 1.5, and so would be less likely to be believed.

Naru will probably not end up an Apostle. To be honest, all I really know about her character is that the Monsters of the Week seem to be attracted to her by the same force that attracts the various kaiju in Godzilla movies to Tokyo Tower.

It seems that all the down sides of the various things that Chrono has done to help the Senshi seem to fall on Rei. Sorry about that.

The parallel between Mary/Pandaemonium's ghost and Hotaru/Mistress 9, as well as Aion's reaction and Haruka's attempted reaction is rather striking (In the manga, anyway. The anime interpretation of Mary gave me the morbid suspicion that her falling in love with Chrono wasn't _despite_ the fact that she knew he'd be a major factor in her death, but_because_ of it). Funny how I didn't even notice it until I started working on this chapter.

The odds of reincarnation happening naturally in the Chrono Crusade universe are virtually zero. However, the reincarnation of the Senshi is a decidedly unnatural event, triggered by Serenity's actions in the past. To continue the fruit punch/river analogy Chrono used, Serenity threw sealed bottles of fruit punch into the river. Since they were still sealed, the bottles still contained fruit punch when they were fished out downstream.

All Chrono knows about Endymion is that the battle that shot down the Pandaemonium was started by his generals. He doesn't know that they weren't acting on Endymion's orders at the time.

Saeko is the name of Ami's mother in the live-action Sailor Moon, which to the best of my knowledge is the only SM canon where anyone bothered to name her at all.

I know that there are laws about when and where medical records can be distributed, but as I see it, Rosette is dead, the only relative that didn't predecease her is dead, which raises the question of who had the right to complain. Chrono's status as almost-boyfriend doesn't really qualify as next of kin, and I also doubt he'd object.

My thanks to Shadow Crystal Mage, Taeniaea and Blue Bragon for the reviews.


	10. The Apostle of Charity

Disclaimer: Sailor Moon is the property of Naoko Takuechi. Chrono Crusade is the property of Daisuke Moriyama.

Child of Hope

By Bissek

Chapter 9

The Apostle of Charity

There were an unusually large number of police officers gathered outside the precinct. Every officer attached to the precinct that wasn't on duty was there, even the ones who should have been in bed given their current duty shifts. A significant portion of the on-duty officers were there as well. Those that weren't immediately needed for patrols, court appearances and manning key points such as the front desk and the dispatch office had managed to join the crowd. Sitting at a desk and writing out routine reports wasn't as important at the task at hand. For these men had gathered to bury three of their own.

The group slowly marched through the streets, bearing the coffins containing the bodies of the men who had fallen in combat with the daimons. The procession made its way to a crematorium, where the officers all paid their final respects to the dead before returning to either their homes or their duties.

Captain Fujita was one of the last people to leave. As he turned away, he considered the implications of what had happened that night. Monster attacks had been a semi-frequent occurrence in the past two years, but this attack took things to a new level. This was the first time that anybody had been killed by the things. In addition, the monster in question had deliberately attacked two officers in uniform. The parties responsible for this incident had declared war on the Tokyo Police. Well, if they wanted war, they were welcome to it.

The first fight between the police and the daimons showed that the weapons that Chrono had provided them could harm them. One officer had weakened a daimon enough for a Senshi to finish of without any trouble. This second fight was different. This time, the police had gone in without the support of any magical girls, and managed to take the monster down. Three officers were dead and a fourth severely injured, but they had proven that the police could fight these things and win. Now, they just needed a way to ensure that they didn't have to exchange casualties at a ratio of four to one.

As the bodies were slid into the cremation chambers, a man approached him from behind.

"It's never easy to say goodbye to a colleague, is it?"

Fujita turned, and saw that Chrono had arrived at some point.

"Speaking from experience?" Fujita asked.

"Unfortunately, yes. It's been a long time since I last had a friend die, but it's happened far more often than I'd like."

The two left the crematorium and started walking back towards the station.

"This is the first time any of these creatures have managed to kill someone."

"Not for lack of trying. Something else is much more worrying." At Fujita's inquisitive glance, Chrono continued. "At the time your men were attacked, there was a second attack at Tokyo Tower. The enemy has realized that the Senshi can only be at one place at a time. If the first attack had happened someplace further away from a precinct, there would have been a massacre."

Fujita winced. If it took at least four men to take down one of those things when actually equipped to fight them, the casualties that they'd inflict on the helpless would be atrocious.

"So that's where you were that night?"

Chrono nodded. "I don't think that the controller that the Senshi and I ran into will be able to cause any more trouble, but from some things she said, there are still three to seven others out there who can."

Policemen tended to do whatever was possible to make sure that cop killers were brought to justice – the last thing they wanted to do was let other criminals get the impression that you could get away with doing that. Information on the group responsible as a whole would put them closer to dealing with the specific perpetrator. As the two reached the police station, Fujita turned to Chrono.

"Why don't we discuss this inside?"

* * *

Eudial had not gotten much rest since Kaolinite's disgrace. She'd been much too busy.

Because of the events of that night, Eudial now knew that there was a third threat to their plans in addition to the Senshi and the mysterious Chrono – the civil authorities. Somehow, the police were now able to take down daimons. Not easily – the daimon had defeated three before being beaten – but the fact that they could do it at all was an unwanted complication.

As a result, Eudial had spent her time going over maps of the city, locating precincts and figuring out what areas were more heavily patrolled. She didn't know how many officers had anti-daimon weapons, but given that all four of the ones the daimon encountered were so armed, even though two of them weren't even on duty, it was likely that most of them were. In order to continue her mission, she needed to come up with safe hunting grounds.

Hmm… Perhaps in addition to trying to find places where her enemies weren't likely to be, she should also try to figure out how quickly they respond to incidents. Even in a high-risk area, a heart crystal grab might be worth the risks if it was pulled off quickly enough. Maybe if she had a few daimons attack in visible areas, then simply remained in the background and watched to see how long it took for someone to arrive to deal with it? Have enough of these attacks, and then she could work up an average response time…

It took some persuasion to convince the Professor to allow her to use some daimon eggs on missions which were guaranteed to be failures, but in the end, Eudial walked away with half a dozen eggs, which she secreted in various locations across the ward. She knew roughly when each would hatch, and would be waiting to see what happened when they did.

* * *

Chrono and Fujita were in Fujita's office. Chrono was in front of a white board, writing up what he had learned from his battle.

"The organization responsible for these incidents refers to itself as the Death Busters." Chrono started, writing the name across the top of the board. "Their immediate objective is to obtain the crystallized souls of anyone they can get their hands on. They seem to believe that doing this will somehow enable them to obtain some powerful artifact, which they intend to use for some unknown purpose.

"The controller I faced appeared to be mid-ranked in their group. She referred to herself as Kaolinite."

"Isn't that some kind of rock?" Commented Fujita.

Chrono nodded "I looked it up. Aluminum-bearing mineral found in clay deposits. Used in the manufacture of paints and stomach medicines."

"An alias, then. Nobody would ever give their child a name like that."

"Agreed. Below her in ranking, we have some group called the Witches 5. I don't know anything about them but the name. I don't even know how large a group it is, though the name implies that there are five of them. Above her in ranking are two individuals. One person known as Mistress 9, and another referred to as The Professor."

"More aliases."

"I'm not even sure if this Professor person has the right to call himself that or just uses the title as an affectation. I think I caught a reference that the Professor was male, but that's the only distinguishing feature I can think of."

Fujita sighed. "Do you have any idea how many people in the Tokyo area have the right to call themselves Professor? Hundreds, most of whom are male. There's no way we can act on that little information. This is interesting background information, but we can't do anything with it at the moment.

"There's also no way to confirm this information at the moment. Without some form of corroboration, it's possible that you've just been fed a red herring."

Chrono didn't try to point out that people don't normally lie in their own thoughts – especially if they don't know that someone else is listening to them. Inserting the concept of telepathy into the conversation would only derail things.

"The Senshi confirm that these people are trying to find something specific with these attacks, though they don't know what the enemy's ultimate goal is either." He began. Fujita frowned, then nodded. "And judging by what happened a few days ago, there has to be at least three people involved in this.

"The two attacks happened simultaneously. That takes two people, Kaolinite and one other. Furthermore, Kaolinite's fight ended with her getting knocked off of Tokyo Tower. If you examine the pavement beneath the tower, you'll find a spot riddled with cracks from an impact. That's where she landed. But by the time I made it back to down the stairs and examined the crater, she was gone.

"While there are recorded cases of people falling several miles without a parachute and surviving, those are the exception, not the rule. A person who falls off a great height and lands on pavement does not walk away under their own power. Someone else had to have removed her. It couldn't have been the one who was at the other attack, the timing is too tight."

"So this Kaolinite is dead?"

"I know she severely injured one hand in the fight, and had to have been injured in the fall, but without seeing a body, I can't say if she survived or not. But unless she can heal at an inhuman rate, she won't be causing trouble in person for a while."

"Wait… how good a look did you get at this woman's face?"

"I saw her pretty clearly, why?"

Fujita picked up a phone and called a sketch artist up. The next hour was spent creating an accurate portrait of the woman who called herself Kaolinite. If they could figure out who she was, they could examine her associates and see if any of them were involved in this case. They now had a lead.

* * *

Saeko Mizuno wasn't sure what she was expecting Dr Grunberg to be like, but there was one thing about her that was definitely unexpected. Namely, the fact that she was about ninety years old. If the medical history she had brought was as old as her medical career, then the person who was described in it had to have died before the founding of Manchuko. Looking at the date listed in the file, Saeko found that her guess was only off by a month.

The discussion took the entire morning. Things were hindered by the fact that the American doctor knew little Japanese, while Saeko's English wasn't exactly perfect. There were frequent pauses while the two tried to find the best way to phrase something so the other would understand it, along with Saeko's need to mentally translate the medical records into Japanese. The only interruption was when a nurse reported that the final officer injured in that incident was finally lucid, which caused Saeko to send a message to the police station to that effect.

Given the considerable advancements in medical knowledge over the seventy years, there were several avenues of treatment that hadn't been available in the late twenties and early thirties. But the records indicated that the treatment of this Rosette Christopher had lasted for seven years. None of the three men that Saeko had treated had made it through the night. How had Grunberg managed to keep her patient alive that long? And why, having achieved that, did she consider the treatment to be a failure?

When Saeko asked her colleague the first question, Dr Grunberg shook her head., saying "I think you're missing a major difference between Rosette's case and the cases you took on."

"What difference is that?"

"The men you treated were exposed to a massive drain in an instant. Rosette was drained at an irregular rate over a three and a half year period. She had a much longer amount of time to live when I started treating her."

Dr Mizuno was appalled. "Three _years_? Why did it take so long for anything to be done about that?"

"Because the draining was her idea in the first place."

"_WHAT?!_"

"Rosette was an exorcist, hunting demons in her quest to track down the one who kidnapped her brother. She volunteered to become a living battery for the Church's ultimate trump card in that fight, knowing full well that she wouldn't live to see thirty if she did so."

Saeko snorted. "Come on, now. Demons? Even with the strange creatures that have been turning up the past few years, you can't seriously believe that there are actual demons on the loose."

"It's not funny. A demon nearly ate me back in '21. If it wasn't for Rosette and her partner, I wouldn't have survived. Rosette sacrificed three quarters of her life span to stop them once and for all. They were very real."

Saeko nodded, conceding the point. The fact that Dr Grunberg literally owed her life to a woman she later failed to save would explain why she would be especially guilty about that failure. "Can you think of anything that had a noticeable effect during the treatments?"

Grunberg sighed. "I think that the only thing that kept her going at the end was her partner."

"So you're saying that some form of emotional support can sustain the patients?"

"Not exactly. Rosette's partner stayed behind on their last mission while she went back with her brother. She was absolutely certain that she would not die until he made it back to her. By rights she should have been killed by the seizures she was having towards the end six months before she actually died, but she held on somehow."

"So she survived because she refused to die?"

"Rosette was the single most stubborn person I've ever met. If anyone could keep a dying body alive through sheer willpower, she could."

Glancing out the window, Saeko noticed a police car pulling in to the hospital parking lot. That would be someone to speak with the injured officer, most likely. Saeko excused herself and went to speak with the arriving policeman.

Dr Elizabeth Grunberg looked out the window and recognized one of the two people exiting the police car. She pulled out her satellite phone, dialed a number, and said two words when the person on the other end of the line picked up.

"Chrono's here."

* * *

The first of the daimon eggs that Eudial had scattered throughout Juuban had hatched, and the Senshi were extremely angry at it. But for once, the anger wasn't because of it targeting one of their own or a friend of theirs. What made them angry was the fact that the egg had been planted in an arcade, and the daimon had possessed the Sailor V machine – while they were playing it. As a result of this, Sailor Venus (along with Moon and Chibi-Moon) found herself facing a daimon copy of herself.

After breaking away from the daimon-senshi, the three managed to find an unoccupied back room and transform. After emerging, Venus immediately charged her double. The doppelganger was quickly forced out of the cramped space of the arcade and into the street. While the other two Senshi started clearing bystanders from the line of fire, the Senshi of Love and her electronic duplicate engaged in a duel of Crescent Beams.

One bystander wasn't running away. An elderly gaijin woman was ignoring the calls to get away and was running around the outskirts of the battle, pausing to crouch down for some reason on occasion. After she had completed a half circle around the fight and was making her way to a point three quarters of the way around the circle her path formed, the daimon-V noticed her and opened fire. The woman dove for the ground, just barely avoiding the attack. She then continued crawling towards a destination only she knew. A few yards later, she reached out and brought her hand down, driving something she was holding into the asphalt.

The object started glowing, as did three similar objects that the woman had placed at the points she had crouched down at. A band of green energy starting at each of the four metal crosses planted into the ground formed, reaching out towards the cross on the opposite side of the circle the woman had traveled, creating a cross that covered a sizable portion of the street. The daimon, standing inside the cross, started screaming in pain. Venus took advantage of the opening to snare her opponent with her chain. Weakened and immobilized, Moon purified the daimon, returning it to its original state as a harmless arcade machine.

Chibi-Moon helped the old woman up.

"Are you alright?" She asked.

"I'll be fine." The woman replied in excellent Japanese. "Though this is the first time I've had to do that in seventy years. It's a good thing I held onto my equipment."

As the old woman collected the small crosses she had planted, the Senshi tried to grasp the concept that she had been fighting monsters back when their grandparents were toddlers. When she had finished, she looked at Chibi-Moon and asked a question that threw all the Senshi for a loop.

"Are you sure you're old enough for this kind of thing? Back in my day they didn't let trainees into the field until they were at least twelve."

Before any replies could be made, a phone started ringing. The old woman pulled the phone from her pocket, listened briefly, then said "On my way." Apologizing for being called away, the woman left in search of a taxi.

After the woman left, Moon turned to Venus. "Did you know this job had an age requirement?" She asked.

"It's news to me." Was the reply.

* * *

When Captain Fuijita learned that the sole survivor of the battle outside the restaurant was awake and able to speak, he immediately went to check on him. Since Chrono had just finished with the sketch artist, he elected to come along. Recognizing their mutual interest in trying to learn more about the parties responsible, Fujita allowed it.

Officer Satoshi Fujiwara was lying in a hospital bed, heavily bandaged over the numerous burns that he had suffered in the fight. He tried to straighten up when he saw Fujita enter the room.

"Captain…" He started.

"Don't try to rise, Satoshi. I know how badly you were hurt." The captain replied.

Satoshi slumped backed into the bed.

"Sir, I failed. I couldn't stop the thing in time to help the others…"

Chrono lightly laid his hand on the man's injured shoulder.

"Officer Fujiwara, out of my first five battles, two ended in total defeat that I barely survived, two were very costly victories in which many friends of mine were killed or maimed for life, and in the fifth I spent all my time running away. Nobody is perfect. You managed to defeat the creature that killed your comrades and survive. That's enough for now."

"But I couldn't even stop the woman who was with the monster…"

Chrono and Fujita exchanged a look at that comment.

"There was a woman with the daimon?" Fujita asked.

Satoshi nodded. "Red-headed woman with red eyes. Attacked me with a flamethrower after the monster went down, then ran."

Fujita mentally noted the description of the person who had killed three of his men, and wrote down on a notepad to make sure he got a sketch artist to work on this. The rest of the time there was spent discussing exactly what had happened in the fight. From the description of the battle, Fujita noted that he should make sure that none of his officers ever fought the daimons alone, or at close distances. As the two left the room, Fujita made one last comment.

"Don't worry, Satoshi. We _will_ get the person responsible for this. Count on it."

After leaving the room, Fujita went to spoke with Dr Mizuno, who had been waiting outside.

"Will he recover?"

"Given the extent of his burns, he may never fully recover." She replied. "As it is, he's going to be in the hospital for months.

"However, there's been a development regarding the affliction that killed the other three men in that incident. Apparently, a foreign physician that was in the area has had some experience with this before. A Dr Grunberg."

Chrono looked thoughtful. "Grunberg… The name seems familiar for some reason, but I can't quite place it.

"Grunberg… Grunberg…"

"What's the matter, Chrono?" Came a woman's voice in English. "Have you nearly gotten yourself bitten in half to save people you didn't have any reason to like so many times that you've lost track?"

Chrono turned and looked at the woman who had spoken. Time had changed her face considerably, but the comment was enough of a clue for him to figure out her identity.

"Beth?"

* * *

When Saeko heard what Dr Grunberg said to Chrono, she froze. She couldn't possibly be referring to the incident she had mentioned earlier. This Chrono person appeared to be in his early to mid twenties. He couldn't possibly be old enough to have saved her life in 1921. It just wasn't possible.

"Hello, Chrono. It's been a while." Grunberg said.

"It has, hasn't it. I haven't seen you since you left the convent to go to medical school." Chrono responded.

"In _1922_. You sure know how to keep in touch with old friends."

As Chrono tried to come up with a response for that, another old woman came out of the elevator and joined Grunberg.

"Don't feel bad, Beth. He hasn't called, written or visited his in-laws in seventy years, either." The newcomer added.

As Saeko choked on the thought that Chrono was apparently much, much older than he looked, he looked at the newcomer and asked "Azmaria? Is that you?" Then he paused, glancing at the second woman's hand to see a wedding ring. "In-laws? You married Joshua?"

"Nice to see you again, Chrono. Would you care to explain why I haven't seen or heard from you since you went charging off into Pandaemonium's core? Or why the first news I get about you in all that time was an article of you making fun of Rosette's driving skills in front of the world press?

"Oh, yes, and incidentally, Joshua and I were married shortly after Rosette died. We both regretted the fact that neither of you were able to attend the wedding. And the fact that none of our children, grandchildren, or _great-grandchildren_ have ever met their Uncle Chrono."

"Come on, Azmaria, you remember how she drove. You're lucky you weren't on that bike when she crashed it into a subway tunnel wall at seventy miles an hour like I was. I'm still amazed that nobody was hurt."

"And what of the fact that the last record of you I could find anywhere was _your death certificate?_"

"Azmaria, that death certificate was filed several hours before the last time you saw me. That should have been all you needed to know that it was fake."

"And I suppose Rosette would have thought of that?"

"Since she was there when Ewan staged my mock assassination, I should think so."

"_CHRONO!_ Do you know how long she waited for you to come back to her?"

Chrono bowed his head. "Seven years, two months, nineteen days." His tone was laden with regret.

"Do have any idea how lo… What was that?"

"There were seven years, two months, and nineteen days between the day I left Rosette to deal with Aion once and for all… and the night she died in my arms."

The two old women froze. Saeko could practically see them trying to work out the dates in their heads. Finally Azmaria asked "You… actually made it back in time?"

"Another thirty seconds and I would have been too late."

Dr Grunberg spoke up "You're the one who's been leaving those flowers on her grave on the anniversary of her death for the past sixty-two years, aren't you?"

Chrono nodded. The hostility in the confrontation died away after that. A few minutes later, Chrono left with the women, and Captain Fujita went on his way shortly afterwards, no doubt considering what he had just overheard. Saeko returned to her office, doing the same thing.

Apparently, Chrono was the partner (husband?) of the long-dead Rosette Christopher. That meant he had to be in his mid eighties at least, which was six decades older than he looked. How was that possible? And what was that about him being _legally dead_ for the better part of seventy years?

Her thoughts were interrupted by call from a nurse telling her to come to Fujiwara's room immediately. When she reached the patient's room, what she saw wasn't the crisis she was expecting from the call.

The nurse had been changing the dressings on Fujiwara's burns. But where there had been horrific third degree burns the previous day, there were now burns that were well on the mend. The degree of recovery increased the further up his torso she looked, and his shoulder had healed so well that she couldn't tell that he had been hurt.

Saeko didn't know how, but she knew that Chrono had somehow been responsible for this. Who in the world was he?

* * *

Eudial had been watching the fight outside the arcade. She suddenly understood why Kaolinite was having trouble before her disgrace, and felt a brief twinge of sympathy for her former commander.

It was bad enough that there was a group of magical girls interfering with their schemes at every turn. It got worse with this strange corporate exec who apparently hunted monsters for a hobby. Then the police became actual players in this game, rather than a mere nuisance that could be ignored. But this! A magical girl _from the 1920s_ had come out of retirement to join in the fight. Was the entire universe scheming against the Death Busters?

The same factors that lead to Kaolinite's downfall could apply to her just as easily. The fact that she had managed to gain one victory would protect her for a time, but if she couldn't repeat that success, then she too would be replaced. Eudial would not let that happen.

* * *

A/N: I've been having more inspiration for my other story than this one lately, but I have no intention of abandoning this fic.

At the time that Sailor Moon was created, the mineral kaolinite was the active ingredient in the non-prescription stomach remedy Kaopectate. It's a good thing the character's powers aren't based on the mineral, or the show would have quickly exceeded the bounds of good taste.

Manchuko was the puppet state that Japan formed in February 1932 from the conquered Chinese province of Manchuria.

The official date of Rosette's death is March 1932, with no day given. The date I implied is March 14, 1932.

Why would Azmaria know excellent Japanese when Beth doesn't? Well, Azmaria's native tongue is Portuguese, a language I doubt that many other people in CC speak (seeing as it isn't that common a second language in America), yet she has no trouble communicating with other people in the anime or manga. So she has apparently mastered a second language by the age of twelve. That implies excellent language skills.

If you're wondering where the grandson of Azmaria who I mentioned two chapters ago is, I decided that he didn't serve any purpose being in Japan and edited him out.

Thanks to Shadow Crystal Mage (Check out his HP crossover stories), Taeniaea, Blue Bragon, lil-saturn-goddess and HyperionTheWatcher for the reviews.


	11. Reminisces

Disclaimer: Sailor Moon is the property of Naoko Takuechi. Chrono Crusade is the property of Daisuke Moriyama. The series cameo referenced in this chapter is the property of Kenichi Sonada.

Child of Hope

By Bissek

Chapter 10

Reminisces

Captain Fujita was of mixed opinion of how his day was going. On one hand, he now had two promising leads that could potentially lead to the Tokyo Police identifying who the people responsible for the monsters plaguing the streets were, and from there hopefully dealing with them once and for all. On the other, the main ally the police had in this matter was becoming even more mysterious by the minute.

While the information that S. Chrono had provided the police had enabled them to successfully fight against the Daimons, Fujita knew nothing about the man himself, not even what the S stood for. A routine check into his background had revealed absolutely nothing - not nothing out of the ordinary, nothing. There was no record of him ever entering the country, no record of what his nation of origin was, no record of him even being born, for that matter. The articles about Chrono since he had been witnessed facing off against the Daimons were the most detailed pieces of information about him that anyone could find.

And that part of the mystery was something he had known about _before_ two old friends of his showed up to complain about how he hadn't written since he had faked his death seventy years earlier. If Fujita had been asked to guess at Chrono's age from his physical appearance, he would have estimated that he was in his early twenties. Now it seemed that he was a survivor of the Battle of Pandemonium (Which also did not exist in the public record) in which the demon race was exterminated, making him in his nineties at least.

What else was Chrono hiding? While Fujita could hardly reject any help being offered in dealing with the current situation, the fact that he knew nothing about his ally whatsoever was troubling. Perhaps looking into his old friends would reveal something.

As Fujita started in on some of the backlog of paperwork on his desk, a knock was heard at his office door.

"Come in." He said. The sketch artist he had sent to interview Officer Fujiwara entered.

"I have the composite sketches of the two suspects finished Captain. We should have enough copies made to start distributing them by tomorrow morning."

"Good. Have the copies left with the duty sergeant so he can hand them out at the morning shift briefing. These women are responsible for killing three officers and crippling a third, and they are not going to get away with it."

"Crippling? Didn't you hear the news about Fujiwara, sir?"

"What news?"

"Most of his injuries just spontaneously healed a few hours ago. He should be free to leave the hospital in a week or so. Nobody's sure how this happened, but the doctors are convinced that that Chrono person had something to do with it."

Yet another thing that the department owed Chrono for. And another mystery. Aritomo was starting to hate mysteries.

"That's good news, at least. Was there anything else?"

"Just an idea one of the people in the armory had. He figures he can modify some tear gas grenades to spray that stuff that's being used in the anti-Daimon bullets. Maybe that will slow the things down a little."

Aritomo didn't know if the oils in the Sacreds would work as a gas, but then he didn't really understand why the Sacreds worked on Daimons when regular bullets didn't either. It was worth trying out, at least. If it worked, then the police would have one more weapon to use to protect the city, one which couldn't hurt civilians if an officer's aim was off, at that.

"Tell him to make enough for some field tests." He ordered.

* * *

Three people stepped through the portal in Tokyo and emerged on a floating island hovering over Mount Fuji.

"Welcome to Eden." Chrono said to his old friends.

"It's been a long time since I was last up here." Azmaria reminisced.

"Why don't I show you both around?" Leading the other two past a large tree, he cautioned them not to eat the fruit.

"Why? Will it give us forbidden knowledge?" Beth asked.

"No, it just isn't ripe. I planted the tree back in '35. I figured that given the name of this place, we had to have an apple tree."

Later on in the tour he showed them an enormous pipe organ. Azmaria recognized it immediately.

"Why is this still here? Don't you remember how dangerous that organ can be?" She demanded?"

"Azmaria, the power of the Astral Organ can only be used by an Apostle, and you're the only Apostle who's been to Eden in the past seventy years. To anyone else, it's just a musical instrument. One of these days I might even get around to learning how to play it."

The tour continued through the rest of the floating island until they reached the door to Shader's lab.

"And this is where Shader spends all her time. And I mean that literally. Once I left her enough food for a week and locked her in. When I came seven days later I couldn't any evidence that she'd even noticed."

"She's still around?" Azmaria asked, remembering the catgirl Sinner.

"Who do you think has been making all the devices I've been selling over the years? I'm not an engineer. She's the only other survivor of the Sinners."

"So Aion's definitely gone?"

"Oh, yes. My brother's body was scattered across the Pacific Ocean shortly after you left Pandemonium." The hate Chrono had for his old enemy still lingered in his voice.

"It's amazing that nothing about that battle ever made the papers." Beth commented.

"Come on, Beth," Chrono joked, happy to take his mind off of Aion, "If you tried to tell anyone that the real reason for the great tidal wave of '24 was because a mentally disturbed teenager who'd had horns grafted to the side of his head used a magic pipe organ to cause an ancient alien refugee ship to rise off the ocean floor and teleport to Seattle, who'd believe you?"

"He's right," Azmaria agreed. "I actually wrote a book about the war, but I realized that if I ever tried to publish it, I'd probably get committed. The manuscripts still sitting on a shelf at home somewhere. But you'd think that the official explanation would be wearing thin. Sooner or later somebody's going to send an oceanographic research expedition down there, and when they do, they'll find that there's no meteor down there and never was."

"At which point the conspiracy theorists will go into overdrive trying to figure out who was hiding what, and I really doubt that they'll even get close to the truth." Beth added in. "Now, I believe you were going to introduce us to someone?"

"That's right." Chrono opened the door. "Shader!" He called out. "We've got company!"

A pair of cat ears popped up over a pile of half-finished machines. "Company? Did you bring that cute Apostle girl up here?"

Azmaria chuckled, "I'm glad to see you remember me after all these years."

Shader emerged from behind the pile, dusting off her solder-spotted work apron. Seeing the two women with Chrono, she paused, trying to figure out if she knew one of them.

"You're... one of the Apostles that Aion brought here to deal with Pandemonium?"

"Yes. It's been a very long time, Shader." Azmaria replied. Then she got a good look at the logo on Shader's apron and had a double take.

"Chrono got it for me the last time he was in Chicago. Isn't it nice?"

Nice or not, it was certainly appropriate. As the world's only catgirl weapons engineer, Shader had every right to consider herself a Gunsmith Cat.

* * *

"I keep trying and trying, but Rosette just won't wake up. Then Chrono came in, gently lifted her out of her bed, and tossed her out the window." Azmaria reminisced sipping her drink.

"Didn't those dorms face the pond?" Beth asked.

"Yup." Chrono nodded. "There was a tremendous splash, and then Rosette climbed back in, soaking wet, and spat out a fish."

"And then Chrono innocently commented that she no longer needed to worry about showering that morning, or going down for breakfast either." Azmaria continued. "At which point Rosette said."

"I like my fish fresh, but not THAT fresh!" The two said in unison before they all burst out laughing.

"It's nice to be able to reminisce about the old times." Azmaria said. "There aren't many of left."

"How many are there, other than us?" Chrono asked.

"Claire's still alive." Beth said. "She's in New York. She took over as head of the Order's Militia in North America after Sister Kate died."

"And possibly Satella and Fiore. That's about it."

"Azmaria, there's no way those two survived. They weren't on Pandemonium after Aion died, and if they'd gotten off earlier, someone would have noticed." Chrono objected.

"I know exactly where they are, Chrono. They turned up a couple months ago."

Chrono spit out his drink.

"You're kidding."

"A few months ago a fishing trawler dredged up an exquisitely detailed crystal sculpture of two women out of Puget Sound. It's definitely them. I don't know how they did that to themselves or if they're still alive in there, but it's them."

"Do you think you could bring the statue over here?" Shader asked. "I think I might be able to figure out how to get them out if I get a chance to study it."

"I bought the statue. I can have it shipped to Japan. It'll take a few weeks, but I should be able to get it delivered without too much trouble."

"It would be nice to see them again." Chrono agreed, then sighed, remembering yet another long-gone friend.

After delivering that piece of potentially good news, Azmaria decided to broach a subject that she had been wondering about for decades.

"Chrono?" She asked, "What happened on Pandemonium after we all left?"

"It was a nightmare," Chrono said flatly. "Oh, not the fight with Aion. That was actually rather anticlimatic. When Rosette destroyed his sword, she took away his ability to absorb Astral. He didn't have my decades of experience in using as little power as necessary, so by the time I confronted him, he barely had the strength to stand. It was over after the first pass.

"The problem was cleaning up the mess he had left behind. Pandemonium was dying, and Shader and I had to get rid of the pieces in such a way that its Legion wouldn't scatter across the world and infect anything that crossed their path. And while that was going on, every single surviving Pursuer was rampaging through the corridors, attacking anything that crossed their paths.

Chrono shuddered. "It was ghastly. Aion's geas had driven them all hopelessly mad. There was no way to cure them. And even if I could, that would have simply changed things so that they were attacking because they knew who I was rather than because they knew I didn't. Fortunately the geas warped most of them to the point that I couldn't recognize who they had once been. I could ignore the fact that many of them had probably been people I had once known. So I could fight and kill and _kill_ until Shader and I were the only demons still alive at the end of the seven year bloodbath.

"There are times when I wonder how much history would have changed if I'd taken Duffau's hand instead of Aion's that day a hundred and twenty four years ago. If things would have turned out better if I had turned against my insane twin a few months earlier and ended the rebellion then and there. Maybe then things would have changed so that the conflict between humans and demons could have been ended by something other than genocide.

"And then there are times that I wonder if the real reason our people had such a strong prohibition against killing each other is because once we get started we don't know when it's time to stop."

As Chrono refilled his glass, he looked like he was considering drinking the rest of the scotch right out of the bottle.

* * *

Katamari Makimachi looked over his notes. It looked like he had another line of investigation to pursue. Chrono's speech at the race track made it difficult to investigate him directly without being seen as trying to interfere with his efforts to protect the city from the Daimons. And that would be very bad for the career of the reporter caught doing so and the business of the paper he worked for. So he had to find an indirect method of gathering information.

But then he got the news of an unusual incident at Juuban General where Chrono was confronted by two old women who claimed to have known him from the twenties, one of whom even claimed to be his in-law (A claim that Chrono made no attempt to refute). Looking up names that were dropped in that conversation, he found nothing on Dr Elizabeth Grunberg or the late Rosette Christopher (Unsurprisingly, as the Tokyo Times saw no reason to keep records on people who lived in other countries or had been dead for decades unless they had done something noteworthy), there was a record on the other person present.

Azmaria Hendric Christopher. Owner and former CEO of the Hendric Group, a chain of hotels and casinos operating across Europe and North America. Born Azmaria Cantor in Fatima, Portugal in 1912. Orphaned in 1920, taken in as a singer by a local orchestra. Adopted by Ricardo Hendric after the mysterious death of everyone else in the orchestra in 1923. Orphaned again in 1924 after Ricardo died in an accident on his private blimp (Orphaned three times in five years. Katamari winced). Hired by a local church as a choir girl shortly afterwards, where she remained until taking over her adoptive father's business in 1930. Married a Joshua Christopher (Apparently a relative of Rosette Christopher) in 1932, which lasted until his death in 1981. Thanks to the success of her inherited business, she and her family were quite rich.

Now, how best to follow up on this? Just reporting the existence of a connection wasn't enough to make a decent story, he needed to develop this a little. The record on Mrs Christopher stated that the Hendric group had briefly tried expanding into Japan, only to give up due to the extreme cost of local real estate after building a single hotel in Tokyo. A little more research revealed that that hotel was still in business. Since she owned the hotel, that would undoubtedly be where she would stay while in the area. A message left there would be sure to reach her.

Reaching for a sheet of paper and a pen, Katamari started writing a letter requesting an interview.

* * *

The Senshi gathered in Rei's living room, discussing the latest developments in the fight against the Death Busters. The conversation had ultimately drifted to the subject of their unexpected and mysterious ally.

"So you're saying that upon hearing a brief description of the time disruption that happened more than seventy years ago, he was able to identify what had happened, where it had happened, and why?" Setsuna inquired doubtfully.

"That's what he claimed," Rei confirmed. "Though why he was so immediately familiar with an incident that had happened that long ago is beyond me."

"He might have known someone that was there," Ami suggested.

"How could that happen?" Haruka objected. "The man's in his twenties. Thirty, tops."

"Mom actually managed to get home in time for dinner last night," Ami began. The other Inners nodded, knowing that her mother's work kept her away from home for long hours often enough to make that an unusual occurrence. "She mentioned that she was visited by a retired doctor who had treated someone who had suffered life energy draining at the start of her career. After they finished their discussions, they ran into Chrono - at which point the visiting doctor asked him why he hadn't written since she had entered medical school in 1922."

There was a pause as the other Senshi wrapped their minds around that. "Could she have mistaken him for someone else? If she entered medical school in the early twenties, she'd have to be around ninety years old." Michiru asked hopefully.

"Not unless he was in on it. He knew her by name. He also knew another lady who was only slightly younger who claimed to be his sister-in-law."

"But how could he live that long and look so young?" Usagi wondered.

"Says a girl who will still be able to have children at the age of a thousand." Makoto pointed out, nodding at Chibi-Usa.

"Are you suggesting that he's a Senshi?" Minako asked.

"He probably isn't a Senshi, but he definitely isn't normal." Rei countered. There were nods of agreement to this. "Though one thing he said when he last visited makes me think I know who has the Talismans."

"Who?" The others all wanted to know.

"When I mentioned them to him, he said that they were undoubtedly lost forever, as the odds of a reincarnation happening naturally are so low as to be effectively impossible. And he went into some detail in explaining exactly why. Now tell me - how many people can you think of who have reincarnated through _unnatural_ means?"

There was a pause as the other Senshi realized what Rei was getting at.

* * *

Eudial looked over her notes. It had taken her a while, but she had found a weakness in the city's defenses against the Death Busters. While she had not been able to find any way to predict the movements of the Senshi, Chrono, or the new octogenarian magical girl who had turned up, the response time for police officers equipped to fight daimons had revealed something interesting.

Not every police officer in Juuban was so equipped. And given the rough area where the officers who could stand up to the Death Busters were found was a pretty close match to the area of responsibility for a single police precinct, which implied that this was where they were all based.

Eudial wasn't sure why only one precinct out of the hundred precincts in the city had the anti-Daimon bullets, but there was a good chance that it was simply that they had yet to acquire enough to distribute them to everyone. If that was the case, then the fact that they had been proven to be effective against Daimons meant that sooner or later they would do so. And that could be troublesome. Four hundred odd men capable of resisting the Death Busters was an irritant. Forty thousand odd such men could be a serious threat.

There were two things she could do with this information. First, she would focus heart crystal activities to parts of the city away from the one dangerous precinct. That would reduce the number of possible threats to just the Senshi and their immediate allies. Second, she would make an example of that precinct. The Tokyo Metropolitan Police had challenged the Death Busters, and she would teach them a lesson. Once the precinct that had dared to resist had been destroyed and its men wiped out, the others would know better than to challenge the power of Pharoah 90.

Grabbing a few sheets of blank paper, Eudial started planning her assault on the Tokyo Metropolitan Police.

* * *

The Council of Bishops gathered around the table. The chief executive body of the Magdalen Order hadn't faced a major crisis in the lifetime of any of the current members, but now it appeared that they were facing one.

"So the Ignoble One still lives," One of them said, "I thought he had been executed seventy years ago."

"He was supposed to have been," Another agreed, "It seems that the agent who had been dispatched to do so either failed to finish him off or simply lied about doing it. Since the Minister died fifty years ago, we can't exactly ask him."

"If Chrono is still alive, how many other demons might have survived?" A third asked, clearly worried, "We don't have the numbers we did when Pandemonium was destroyed. If they rise again, we aren't ready for another war."

"Then we'll just have to destroy them before they are."

There was further discussion, but the decision had effectively just been made. In the end their conclusion was simple: Seventy years before, the Council had ordered that all demons be hunted down and exterminated without exception. That order had never been rescinded and wasn't going to be changed now.

* * *

A/N: Has it really been five years since I updated this? Wow. I didn't intend for it to be that long, but I just found Kirika to be a more interesting character to write about than Chrono, and after finishing Black Hands, I got the idea for White Devil and ended up writing that instead of returning to this story. Fortunately, at this point I don't have any ideas for other stories that are developed enough to actually try to write them.

Sister Claire is an anime-only character. She's one of the three girls whose primary purpose is to gossip about how much stuff Rosette managed to accidentally destroy recently.

The defenestration incident did happen, in a manga-only story.

Cantor is Portuguese for singer.


End file.
